significantly affect SMEs’ performance. SMEs
should evaluate their marketing channel including
their sales area. Most of SMEs did not evaluate their
distribution as long as they can sell their product.
SMEs mostly consider themselves that their product
is actually for locals, but some of their product might
actually going overseas under a certain distribution
channel. Learning their product destination can be
one step closer to ensure that their product always
available for the customers.
In addition with the digitalization toward industry
4.0 we would like to discuss furthermore about
SMEs’ promotion which currently has the least score
in average practices in our study. Previous study
indicated that SMEs have a significant barrier toward
e-marketing practices which will be essential in the
aspect of Internet of Thing (Industry 4.0) (Soto-
Acosta, 2016). Previous study evaluate the adaptation
of e-marketing on SMEs’ performance which low but
significant. Many of our SMEs still avoid e-
marketing even though today’s minimum
requirement for e-marketing is relatively low by the
effect of social media and even more afforable e-
marketing and e-shopping tools in the future.
6 CONCLUSION
SMEs in Medan has not ready to adapt into Industry
4.0 yet. Digitalization and Internet of Thing (IoT)
adaptation is still progressing yet strugling as they are
not even mastering their own social media or online
shop account. Thus, it is important to support SMEs
with the required piece of resources needed such as
knowlegde and skill transfer regarding industry 4.0 to
the SMEs. Our study also conclude that pricing
strategy is important for SMEs as well as the product
development. They should set the price right based on
product quality and buyers’ purchasing power while
pursuing demand.
Our study has examined the relationship between
marketing mix and SMEs’ performance in Medan.
The result showed that each of marketing mix has a
positive and significant effect toward SMEs’
performance. That being said, improving overall
marketing performance will lead to a better SMEs’
performance. The current situation showed that
SMEs’ promotion practice still left a lot of room for
improvement. E-Marketing also can be considered as
one step to create a better promotion to generate a
better performance.
The study does have a limitation, especially
taking only one city as the sample which can affect
the actual model and should be limited the
interpretation to only one region. We suggested for an
even greater research conducted to contribute and
create a better conclusion toward marketing effect on
SMEs’ performance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge that the
present research is supported by Universitas
Sumatera Utara. The support is under the research
grant Basic Research of TALENTA 2018 Contract
Number 116/UN5.2.3.1/PPM/KP-TALENTA
USU/2018.
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