MARKETING STRATEGY FOR PREMIUM AND ARTISAN SNACK FOOD BUSINESS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

• Main Author: Conant Wijaya, Nicholas
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Manajemen umum
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/63681
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Sugar Folks is an online MSME snack food business, situated in North Jakarta, established in 2020, and specializes in premium and artisan soft-baked cookies. However, Sugar Folks is incapable to achieve stable sales outside holiday seasons such as Christmas, Lunar New Year, and Eid al-Fitr despite of new product launch and marketing activities. The questions raised for this research are to find new marketing strategy for Sugar Folks to implement in its introduction stage and to reach stable sales. The objectives of this research are to expand Sugar Folks business in the snack food industry and to increase Sugar Folks’ sales, revenue, and profit. The limitation of this research is the data collected limited from January- November 2021 for the amount of sales and marketing data presented on this research was from 20th August 2021 and 17th November 2021. Therefore new marketing strategy is proposed to address the business issue using internal analysis and external analysis. Internal analysis will be completed using Value Chain analysis and Resource-based View analysis. External analysis will be completed using PESTEL analysis, Porter’s Five Forces analysis, competitor analysis, STP analysis, Marketing Mix (4Ps), and customer’s insights. Qualitative research method in the form of interviews are used to learn customer’s insights about Sugar Folks. After analyzing the Sugar Folks’ internal and external environment, the research is continued with SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis consisted of Strength and Weakness are the result of internal analysis while Opportunity and Threat are the result from external analysis. The reason behind Sugar Folks incapability to achieve stable sales outside holiday seasons are caused by its competition, its marketing program, its human resources as well as having no physical presence. Sugar Folks competition created high substitutes, and Sugar Folks has minimal product differentiation. The marketing program of Sugar Folks is lacking, with low public awareness of the brand, and minimum customer relationships. Sugar Folks has no physical outlet for its product distribution and its e-commerce channels are under-utilized. Sugar Folks human resources are limited. After the SWOT analysis, TOWS Matrix is created by combining strategies formed between SWOT analysis. The business strategy selected for Sugar Folks emphasized on marketing strategy. The reason behind selecting marketing strategy is the Ansoff’s Matrix. Ansoff’s Matrix shown that Sugar Folks should focus on market penetration because its products and markets already exist. Therefore the research is revising Sugar Folk’s current marketing strategy with a newly improved marketing strategy. STP analysis, Marketing Mix (4Ps), and AISAS Funnel Marketing are used to formulate new business strategy for Sugar Folks. The new marketing strategies for Sugar Folks are to encourage product reviews and use product reviews as marketing content to create better brand image, promote e-commerce channels on Instagram frequently, attend more direct selling channel events such as fair and exhibition, encourage multi-product purchase with discounts such as high volume and low volume product bundling, while highlighting convenience, and enjoyment of Sugar Folks’ products.