Improving competitiveness of palm oil fruit dealer to increase the Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) Trading

Abstract

Decrement in FFB trading is the main concern of fruit dealer in agriculture intermediary business. High customer discharge rate has reduced the sales of company, indirectly affect the competitiveness of company towards other dealers. High competition in FFB dealers’ market has reminded the organisation to pay attention on its current strategy. It needs realistic alternatives to improve the competitiveness of company. The purpose of the research is to identify the factors that influence the fruit trading of company and to suggest useful interventions to increase the competitiveness of company by looking at the performance of fruit trading. The research also evaluates the effectiveness of interventions such as outsourcing workers, adopting social media platform, and adjusting on price tactic in the process of enhancing the FFB trading in KTG Yong Hin Sdn. Bhd. Porter’s Diamond theory and Porter 5 forces model has used to assess the competitive strength of a business. Some interventions are proposed to improve practically towards the status quo of company. A mixed method approach is used in this research for pre interventions and post interventions. There are 5 respondents involved in qualitative study, while a total of 11 respondents took place in quantitative study. All the respondents are from management level. SPSS and thematic analysis were mainly used to interpret and analyse the findings in this study. As the results, the interventions included outsourcing workers, adopting social media platform, and adjusting on price tactic implemented in company found to be significant based on the results of paired samples t-test analysis and thematic analysis. This research gives future researchers a guidance to further investigate any strategy that suitable for palm oil fruit dealer in improving its competitive position, thus increasing the FFB trading. This research is suitable to act as a guide for small company with same business nature to employ it especially during strategy planning and execution.