The VirMa Virtual marketplace: a co-designed exercise to enhance the small-scale fisheries value chain

An ad-hoc focus group was created to perform a co-design exercise to identify the best innovative approach to overcome issues that emerged during a local small-scale fisheries (SSF) stakeholder consultation (Marche Region, Italy). The scope of that work is to design a virtual marketplace for small-scale fisheries products, based on specific needs coming from different actors of the SSF value chain. A virtual market application was developed using FileMaker© software (Claris International Inc., version 18). This application was able to run both on smart devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and personal computers. This information and communication technology (ICT) allows fishermen to upload their catches on that virtual marketplace, where buyers can order in real-time. The objective is to explore and penetrate new and most valuable market segments, to sustain the SSF value-chain. The activities have been done from February 2019 to December 2020. The dataset here reported shows main screenshots of the so-called VirMa application, with the indications of main functionalities, both from fisherman and from buyer account interface.