Repackaging Louisiana’s Crawfish Production and Marketing to Generate Revenue and Employment

Louisiana accounts for 90% to 95% of the total U.S. production of Crawfish from year to year, either from wild waters of the state, or on farms. Even though, the commercial sales of crawfish in Louisiana date back to the late 1800s—the state is still actively engaged in crawfish industry to provide millions of pounds harvested from farms and natural waterways in the Bayou State. The harvesting of wild crawfish from natural habitats such as bayous, swamps and marshes provides a significant number of jobs for Louisiana residents. The Atchafalaya Basin is world famous for its crawfish production. More than 800 commercial fishermen harvest crawfish from wetlands, mostly in the Atchafalaya Basin. The governor making an attempt to set the favorable environment and also give incentives to the crawfish farmers may boost its production to add to the GDP of the economy. Because revenue generation and employment diversification are very critical to the state of Louisiana, this particular study is devoted to unearth the numerous repackaging techniques for Louisiana crawfish production and its marketing strategies to assist the state in diversifying or broaden its revenue base and employment avenues to ensure growth and development. As a result the study used 200 sample size of crawfish farmers across the state of Louisiana. To better inform policymakers, the study used binomial logistic regression to analyze the perceived determinants of crawfish production in Louisiana. The study found out that the Louisiana State can diversify its marketing strategies to employ more people to work on the promotion of the crawfish production in the state of Louisiana. The following marketing strategies (deployment, channel management, contact database, email marketing, event triggered actions, lead management, multi-campaign and the use of social media platform) revealed in the study to assist the state of Louisiana to improve upon it employment avenues through sales and also expected to generate more revenue for the state through taxes. The study reveals that crawfish farmers continue to be in business due to the following factors: price/profit, government regulations, transport assistance, and the market trends/demand for the product. The study further revealed that repackaging the Louisiana crawfish farming will lead to revenue generation, employment creation, cultural enrichment & promotion and also improve upon the export earnings associated with crawfish products. Above all, the study strongly recommends that the governors and the federal government should support the repackaging of the old marketing tools used by the farmers to adapt to the modern forms of sales-marketing in order to enhance more jobs creation and also promote the sales of the crawfish products to boost the nation’s GDP and revenue generation. Keywords: Employment, Revenue, Crawfish, Logistic Regression, Regulations, Sales, Cultural, and Transport DOI: 10.7176/JESD/11-12-05 Publication date:June 30th 202