Improvement of marketing strategies to increase sales of SME business at PASA Skudai Trading

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to assist the SME business, Pasa Skudai Trading which solely sell frozen foods and fresh vegetables to venture into ecommerce channel to drive the business sales in pandemic of Covid-19 situation as another new profit stream due to reduce in walk in customer in physical store. The action research will involve the process of venturing into selection of e-commerce platforms and marketing strategy to increase the sales. By following a qualitative and quantitative research method, the study will investigate the root of internal and external factors that contribute towards decline in company sales before implementing the intervention for the business. Importance of this study will bring benefits towards other SMEs businesses that experienced the same situation and provide mobile solutions towards the community in Skudai and Johor Bahru to shop for groceries without hassle in this pandemic Covid-19 phase. This study involved the phase of venturing the business into e-commerce through Grabmart after 30 years in doing physical business. Apart from that, this study also helped the business in improving the marketing strategies through venture collaboration with another supplier such as meat & poultry suppliers, baking ingredients supplier and another grocer suppliers to diversify the goods and products offered towards customers in their online and offline business and making Pasa Skudai Trading as one stop center to shop for grocery products. For this study, the researchers structured the methodology based on the philosophy assumption of the action research, pragmatism approach. The timeline and target participants were clearly defined. We use both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect our data through interviews and survey to help researchers to gain the viewpoints from the organization and gather the inputs from their experiences on the intervention that could be carried out. Lastly, the conclusion chapter of this thesis concludes the findings and analysis, and it contains significant improvement from viii analyzed data which reflects into the business sales through figures. The study also discusses theoretical implications, recommendations, limitations and suggestions for future research.