AN ANALYSIS OF TOURISM AMBASSADOR PERCEPTION TOWARD EMBROIDERY AND NEEDLEWORK BUSINESSES IN WEST SUMATRA

OKTARI, PRATIWI (2015) AN ANALYSIS OF TOURISM AMBASSADOR PERCEPTION TOWARD EMBROIDERY AND NEEDLEWORK BUSINESSES IN WEST SUMATRA. Masters thesis, Universitas Andalas.

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Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have a strategic role in the development of the national economy, because in addition to a role in economic growth and energy absorption work also plays a role in the distribution of development outcomes. In the economic crisis happened in our country since a few years ago, where many large-scale enterprises stagnated even stopped its activities, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) proved to be more powerful in facing the crisis. Indonesia as a developing country that used to be only focus on agriculture, nowadays start to focus in industry sector due to world economic globalization development. Agriculture is a major source of raw material for field industries. The existence of good cooperation between industry and agriculture will create balance each other. Due to the strong agriculture will support the creation of industry well, both in increasing state revenue sources and in providing for the public welfare (Durianto, 2001). For several regions in Indonesia especially in West Sumatra the SMEs has important role to increase the economic growth. This study will focus on embroidery and needlework in West Sumatra. Almost every region in West Sumatera has its own motif of embroidery and needlework. The governments start to invites the citizen to wear the local product to improve the awareness of local product. It brings the increasing number of target market. As we know that embroidery and needlework often synchronize with older women wear the product, several people still have that ancient perspective. In order to improve market segmentation, this study will help the industries by investigate young people that have a great sense of culture and yet take care of it. Nowadays, many association and young community bring out campaign to “wear our product and love the culture”. In this research, researcher will investigate the perception of young people as the tourism ambassador that has role to promote the tourism in West Sumatra and as the icon who wear the embroidery and needlework product. Along with the tourism promotion, it can improve sales of local product based on the creative economy that rules by government which is based on people’s use of their creative imagination to increase an idea’s value, so it can be more visitors, more creativity with selling local product to the visitor. Some of the institution and community start to wear the product of embroidery and needlework of West Sumatra on their daily outfit, and for any other event. For this situation, many designer, expert and fashion lover use the embroidery and needlework to make an innovative creation of fashionable cloth and become a trend. So, it can also drive a tight competition within SMEs of embroidery and needlework in West Sumatra to produce variety of products. Competition has proved to be a critical force in the operation of various organizations regardless of their industry of belongingness. The important point to be attention by the business is how to exist and win the competition for long time and increase the market share every year. Further, Pearce and Robinson (2007) defines environment as the general industry conditions for competition that influence all business that provide products and services similar. The operating environment also called the competitive or environment task comprises factors in the competitive situation that affect a firm’s success in acquire needed resources or profitability in marketing its goods and service. Companies should have a product that has competitive advantage with the other competitor. There are many routes to competitive advantage, but they all involve giving buyers what they perceive as superior value – a good product at a low price; a superior product that is worth paying more for; or a best-value offering that represents an attractive combination of price, features, quality, services, and other appealing attributes. By understanding the needs, wants and demands of customers, it will provide important input for the company to design a marketing strategy in order to create satisfaction for its customers (Kotler and Armstrong, 2001). Competition makes companies need to monitor environment that is continuously changing and adjust marketing strategies to meet the challenges and new opportunities. The development of business environment can lead to changes in the needs and one's desire. In a short time, this product can be found easily in all existing distribution channels, with the promotion of a product launch. Pricing strategy becomes important for the company to gain market share. A condition of intense competition makes consumers extremely vulnerable to change, so that each company is required to be able to keep up with changing consumer desires continuously. Most studies agree that marketing in small businesses is different from marketing in similar big companies. Small businesses marketing are identified by features such as accidental, informal, unstructured, reactive and developed in accordance with norms and standards of industry (Fillis, 2002; Gilmore, 2001; Hill, 2001a; Coviello, 2000). Also, in small businesses, marketing is used for current needs (Stokes, 2000) and pay a little attention to the strategies and plans, this is the opposite of marketing in big corporates whose marketing is formal, planned and highly structured (Reijonen, 2010). Despite these differences, it should be noted that the basic concepts of marketing, such as: “market segmentation, customer orientation, positioning and searching for competitive advantages”, are the same as large companies (Hogarth-Scott S., 1996). However, they hardly pay attention to customers’ opinions. They have spent considerable time to communicate with clients and social networking; However, they do not account these activities among the marketing activities. In other words, they spend considerable time and resources to marketing activities, while these activities are not considered marketing (Stokes, 2000; Stokes and Nicholas, 2010). However, it is seen in all cases that they do not follow the traditional principles of marketing, and they do not have enough and deep knowledge in the field how they communicate with their customers, how they investigate about their competitors and finally how they develop their marketing mix (Moriarty and Jones, 2008; Carson, 2005; Stokes and Lomax, 2002 ). Small business owner / managers do not manage their businesses adhering to accepted textbook management principles; have neither the time nor the inclination to contemplate complicated theories or processes (Hogarth-Scott S., 1996); are unable to reach a sufficiently systematic plateau documented (Brockhaus, R. H., 1983); are often skeptical of the value of existing management training and development programs. Additionally, owner/managers need to be generalists rather than specialists which mean that – “Formal marketing may be interesting to the entrepreneur but it is unlikely to relate closely enough to his/her situation specific requirements or to solve company problems” (Carson, D., 1993). In examining marketing education from the perspective of embroidery and needlwork as the small firm, a fundamental question must be what do these owner/managers need from marketing? Conservative and/or entrepreneurial marketing is possible for both small and large firms. Small firms with a conservative approach to marketing might advertise in a local newspaper with commonplace advertising, while a large firm that uses entrepreneurial marketing might launch a sophisticated viral advertising campaign. What small firms should learn is that there is an entrepreneurial approach to every element of the marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion). Marketing mix is the critical factors of doing the business especially in this study in embroidery and needlework. They should concern all of components of marketing mix with the market needs. Marketing mix has relationship with market segmentation, the embroidery and needlework SME’s should adjust the product, price, promotion and place with the most suitable market segmentation that can shape the target market of product, and create the image of product of customer’s mind as positioning. All of marketing effort doing by company aims to gain customer satisfaction. They should understand about customer satisfaction. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers; customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator. Businesses who succeed in these cut-throat environments are the ones that make customer satisfaction a key element of their business strategy. This study aims to analyze the marketing mix strategies and market segmentation in the Small Medium Enterprises of embroidery and needlework in West Sumatera to increase market share on tourism ambassador point of view. Based on the previous illustration, the researcher would like to conduct research on marketing strategies by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in West Sumatera. The study title is “An analysis of Tourism Ambassador Perception toward Embroidery and Needlework Businesses in West Sumatra.”

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