Frugal innovation: A case study on the partnerships of Ensogo Philippines and selected small and medium enterprises

• Main Authors: Kingsu, Jonathan Y., Manila, Marla Aina F., Marasigan, Leah M., Semaña, Ciara Michel D.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/11963
• Institution: De La Salle University

Ensogo Philippines is a group buying site that partners with several businesses. Currently, they partner with big companies, and only a few Small and Medium Enterprises. The group buying nature allows them to adapt frugal innovation, which is about lowering costs for products and services without sacrificing the quality. The method used for the study was an exploratory research in order to gain new insights about the topic. A focus group discussion was done for data gathering and the participants were composed of 24 Small and Medium enterprises from the food industry. Three sets of focus group discussion were conducted with each set having a mix of SMEs with and without experience in partnering with group buying sites to gain several insights concerning previous and possible partnerships with Ensogo. Also, an interview with the Marketing director of Ensogo was conducted to gather information about the frugal innovation being done by the company. A context analysis was used for the treatment of data through the transcribed data from the focus group discussion and interview. The interview with the marketing director of Ensogo showed that SMEs could gain several benefits upon partnering with Ensogo, some of it are brand awareness, a market research group and customer feedback. The data that was gathered from the focus group discussion showed that the SMEs consider factors such as brand awareness and the increase of sales and customers when partnering with group buying sites. On the other hand, the main barrier on the possible partnerships between SMEs and Ensogo is the required discount fee, where SMEs think that there is a possibility for them on incurring a loss. In this study, it would be presented the actions Ensogo can do, and what factors to prioritize in order to partner with Small and Medium Enterprises.