Product Characteristics, Market Competitive Strategies, and SMEs Performance: Testing Their Relationships

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has made the economy in Indonesia sluggish, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Simultaneously, the SMEs existence in Indonesia is fundamental and considered important by the government since it is able to assist numerous laborers and become an income source for the lower and middle classes of the community. The productivity of SME in a region will undeniably influence the availability of job and, of course, reduce the number of unemployed. Therefore, in this study, the researchers looked at how to improve SMEs performance to continue to exist amid the COVID-19 pandemic, by identifying the relationships between product characteristics, market competitive strategies, and the performance of SMEs. The research was done on SMEs in West Java, Indonesia. The example employed was Batik SMEs in Cirebon with at least 10 years in existence, and the total number of these SMEs was 165. As the basis of a quantitative approach, this study employed survey instruments by distributing a questionnaire. In analyzing the data, it utilized the structural equation modeling (SEM). The result showed a significant relationship between Product Characteristics, Market Competitive Strategy, and Price and Product Success Rate on SMEs Performance. This study's findings contribute to the SMEs performance literature.