Study of Management and Marketing Optimization of Small and Medium Business Products (SMEs) in Medan City

Abstract

The management and development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) requires attention and partisanship from various parties so that SMEs can have the potential to progress and develop to encourage regional economies, because when the economic crisis hit Indonesia, SMEs have proven their resilience and saved the nation by helping to spin the country's economy. However, SMEs in Indonesia generally still depend on the characteristics of the commodity being cultivated, so it is not excessive if the SMEs in their development are not free from various obstacles such as technical, technological, management, marketing, social and institutional, information and financial. This is closely related to the quality of human resources (HR) with a limited level of education (mostly at the elementary and junior high school level) and the legality of the business entities it manages, as well as the weakness of alignments. Direct and data information documents that are available to formulate the potential of SMEs in terms of the feasibility of the management and marketing of small industries in the city of Medan, based on the cluster approach as an effort to develop and grow the local economy that can involve many actors. The objectives of the study were: (1) to identify SMEs in Medan that have the ability to manage and develop markets, (2) analyze SMEs that are feasible to be fostered and provided assistance for business expansion or development, in terms of market expansion (3) developing management and marketing strategies that suitable for SME development in Medan City. This research was conducted in all SMEs in the Medan region which consisted of 21 sub-districts with criteria for food, beverage and handicraft businesses. The method used is descriptive analysis, both quantitative (descriptive statistics in the form of tabulation) and qualitative (analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats or qualitative SWOT).

Keywords: small and medium enterprises (SMEs), marketing, management, regional economy.