Proceedings of 3rd Global Accounting, Finance and Economics Conference
5 - 7 May, 2013, Rydges Melbourne, Australia, ISBN: 978-1-922069-23-8
Marketing Activities in Small Medium Sized Enterprises:
Evidence from Indonesian Embroidery Industry
Yulia Hendri Yeni*
Small Medium Enterprieses (SMEs) play an important role in economic
development in developing country such as Indonesia, particularly in West
Sumatera in order to recovering after the earthquake that hit several cities
in 2009. This paper reports the research of marketing activities in small and
medium size of embroidery firms which become an icon of West Sumatera
craft. Most firms have been able to market their products globally to
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. It can be assumed that the owner of
business having marketing knowledge and do appropriate marketing
activities. However, there is a lack of published study to show the evidence
of this issue. Hence, this research is purposed to redress that gap by utilize
the modification of Carson’s level of activity model to classify marketing
activities, and further developed the model by adding elements of product
and place, as discussed by Sengupta and Chattopadehyay (2006).
In the middle of 2011, the recorded structure interview to 40 owners of
embroidery firms have been conducted in West Sumatera. The interview
guideline is developed based on Carson’s level of activity model which
classified the marketing activities into non marketing, implicit marketing and
sophisticated marketing, and modified into eleven questions; market,
competitors, customer, market information, significant events, competitive
advantage, promotion, price, after-sales service, product, place or
distribution. These questions classified into external and internal marketing
activities.
Most SMEs (90%) have been operating for more than 5 years, and 16 have
run the business for more than 20 years. In term of firm size, 62.5% are
small firms. More than 58% SMEs have been doing external and internal
marketing activities at non marketing level. Five firms with the owners who
active as a members of craft association, are found practise the implicit
marketing. Nine SMEs have conducted the sophisticated marketing level.
*Dr. Yulia Hendri Yeni, Management Department, Andalas University, Indonesia
Fakultas Ekonomi Kampus Limau Manih, Padang-25163, West Sumatra, Indonesia,
Email:yuliayeni@yahoo.com.au
Telp :+628126703805, Fax: +6271089