Analysis of Smoked Fish Marketing in Mubi North Local Government Area, Adamawa State

Abstract

The study analyzed smoked fish marketing in Mubi-North Local Government Area, of Adamawa State. The specific objectives were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of smoked fish marketing, describe the cost and returns of smoked fish marketing, describe channels of smoked fish marketing, describe the constraints to smoked fish marketing, and describe marketing efficiency of smoked fish marketing in the study area. Data was collected from 122 smoked fish marketers using simple random sampling technique. The data was collected from 50% of the sampling frame of each category of the smoked fish marketers within the local government area using a structured questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The result reveals that majority (40.98%) of the fish marketers fell within 31 – 40 years, majority (63.93%) of the respondents were male, about 57.38% were married, about 49.18% of the respondents in the study area had primary education, 60.66% of the respondents had a household size of 1-5 people. further, the result revealed that 54.10% of the respondents in the study area had 21-30 years of marketing experience. Also, the result reveals that majority (53.27%) of the smoked fish marketers are small-scale operators with net income of N29, 173 per cartoon with marketing efficiency of 137.47% which indicate that their efficiency is relatively high implying that smoked fish marketing in the study area is efficient. The study has shown that the distribution channel of smoked fish in Mubi-north local Government Area is a decentralized channel in which the consumers can also obtain their fish directly from the producer that is there was liberty of distribution to every individual with little involvement of middlemen in the distribution. It was concluded that smoked fish marketing in Mubi-north local Government Area of Adamawa State is Profitable despite the problem encountered. To forestall the problems associated with smoked fish marketing in Mubi-north local Government Area of Adamawa state, the following recommendations were proffered: Financing of smoked fish marketing requires access to affordable and timely credit facilities to facilitates and sustain efficient and effective marketing processes, to minimize high cost of transportation as a result of rising fuel price and bad roads, the government should rehabilitate and were possible construct new roads linking fishing zones and fish markets, fish marketing association should be established so that they can have easy access to new information and marketing strategies in order to improve their marketing strategies.