UNAIR NEWS – At the end of 2022, Prof Dr Sri SE Msi Hartini was officially inaugurated as a Professor in Marketing Strategy, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) on Wednesday, December 28. In her scientific oration, Prof. Sri Hartini presented her research entitled Digitalization in Business Development for Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs).
Starting her scientific oration, Sri Hartini mentioned data from the Ministry of Finance that MSMEs account for 90 percent of business activities and create more than 50 percent of jobs worldwide. But unfortunately, only 20 percent of MSMEs are digitally savvy. Thus, Prof. Sri emphasized that MSMEs must receive full support to increase competitiveness. One way is to perform digitalization.
“A simple way to digitalize MSMEs is, for example, by using the Point of Sales (PoS) application. This application can make it easier to record income, expenses, and profits automatically, including recording incoming and outgoing goods in the warehouse,” said the 31st active FEB Professor.
MSME digitalization
Furthermore, she said AR and VR create customer experiences to minimize the risk of cancellation because VR can create 3D environment interactions. Meanwhile, AR can incorporate elements of the virtual world into the real world through computer-generated objects.
“For example, if you want to buy a car, you can try it in the virtual space and adjust the space in the real world. It means that you can estimate the size of the car for access to the house,” said the professor born in Cepu, Blora Regency.
She believes AR and VR can strengthen digital marketing capabilities in persuading consumers.
Online reviews
Prof Sri suggested that MSMEs use online reviews on all aspects of customer services. In her research, Prof. Sri showed that online reviews determine consumer purchasing decisions for both products and services. However, according to her, service reviews have a higher determining value than product reviews.
“Because it turns out that potential customers need more experiential service reviews. For a product review, potential consumers can evaluate it themselves through product specifications, so they ignore online reviews,” she explained.
Adjusting business strategy
Sri also said that when the pandemic was over, not everyone would adopt old habits, such as offline shopping, because consumers tend to continue to love online shopping as a new habit during a pandemic. On the other hand, several start-ups have begun to fall, seen from mass layoffs at GoTo, Ruangguru, and Shopee. Apart from that, Sayurbox also closed its service.
Thus, MSMEs must adapt their business strategy to environmental changes in the era of Society 5.0 by means of understanding digital marketing. “There must be a new balance between online and offline purchases, so MSMEs need to prepare an omnichannel, ” said Prof Sri.
Omnichannel means providing unlimited access to customers when shopping online and offline through communication channels into one universal interface. In this case, for example, purchasing products from Instagram can be interconnected with various platforms in the store.
Prof. Sri also emotionally expressed her gratitude to her parents, family, UNAIR academic community, and everyone who provided support. She is also committed to making FEB the front guard in preparing the digitalization of MSMEs so they can compete in the global market. (*)
Author: Viradyah Lulut Santosa
Editor : Binti Q. Masruroh
