DIGITAL MARKETING CHANGES OF MICRO-SMALL ENTERPRISES BEFORE AND DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN BOGOR, INDONESIA

: The advance of information technology has opened up the digital marketing which spreads and is adopted fast. Micro-small Enterprises (MSEs) has also adopted this technology, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the restricted movement policy. This paper aims to analyze digital marketing used by MSEs during this Covid-19 pandemic in Bogor, Indonesia. Specifically, the objectives are (1) to identify digital marketing used by MSEs before and during Covid-19 pandemic, and (2) to analyze the obstacles and challenges in utilizing digital marketing by MSEs in Bogor, Indonesia. Questionnaire survey was conducted online to MSEs in Bogor in August-September 2020 with 27 respondents filled up the form. The respondents of MSEs in this study realized the importance of digital marketing, which the majority has already utilized, and its use has even increased during the pandemic. The results of this study showed that firstly, the majority of MSEs utilized social media and WhatsApp group as their digital marketing before and during the pandemic, in which around 11 percent of respondents started to utilize digital marketing to increase their sales during the pandemic. Secondly, the respondents were aware of their limited time and skills in presenting good content marketing in their social media. However, they realized digital marketing offers an opportunity to expand their market.


INTRODUCTION
Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSEs) are considered as the backbone of Indonesian economy. Sarfiah (2019) mentioned that MSEs have a strategic and important position in Indonesian economy. Meanwhile, micro-small enterprises (MSEs) as a part of MSEs play an important role in economic development. As of 2018, MSEs absorbed 93.88 percent of total labor force and contributed 47.37 percent to gross domestic product (Table 1). Moreover, the number of MSEs business amounted to 99.88 percent of total number of business in the country. This implies that MSEs are important business players with a high number of business units and labor force.
Meanwhile, industry has developed over the decades and come to the fourth industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution emerged through the use of steam engines for mechanical production, the second through electricity and division of labor to create mass production, the third through information technology and the fourth through digital transformation (Effoduh, 2016). Through the development of information and communication technology (ICT) such as cyber physical system, internet of things and networks, some companies have taken the advantages of ICT and boomed in the business world. However, there are some companies that have existed for hundreds of years have to shut down due to their difficulty in going along with development of ICT. In other words, ICT becomes an important technology in business world.
In terms of ICT development in Indonesia, especially for internet, the internet users have been increasing over time. As stated by APJII survey, Indonesian internet users reached 171.17 million people out of 264.16 million people of population in the country in 2018. It increased to 196.71 million people out of 266.91 million people of population in 2019. In other words, internet users penetration has increased by 8.9 percent, from 64.8 percent in 2018 to 73.7 percent in 2019 (ISC, 2020). Internet users in Indonesia are relatively high, around two thirds of the population, and tend to increase in the future ( Figure 1) with an average annual increase of 9.3 per cent from 2017 to 2020, which has made Indonesia to be one of countries with the fastest growth of internet users in the world. In 2023 the number of internet users in the country is predicted to reach around 212.2 million users. In short, this increasing trend of internet users penetration leads to the new market opportunity for business.  Business players, including MSEs, should consider the advance of ICT and try to get involved in it; otherwise, they cannot compete in this digital era. Thus, government and other institutions also support MSEs to get involved in digital marketing. Digital marketing is marketing system using the internet and information technology with the purpose of expanding and improving traditional marketing function (Urban, 2001). Digital marketing can be done through owned media, paid media and earned media. In addition, due to the outbreak of Covid-19, which has made the government restrict movement, recent studies have documented that consumer behaviors have rapidly changed since then. Previously, online shopping was more common with millennial cohort; however, during the pandemic period and afterwards it will also be dominated by almost all generational cohorts, including baby boomers and generation X. Therefore, some MSEs have been forced to use digital marketing in order to survive and to take advantage of its opportunities. Some online marketplaces, such as tokopedia, shopee, bukalapak, lazada, jd.id, or blibli.com can be the alternative for MSEs to sell their products. In addition, social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, can also be used.
Digital marketing strategy can be classified into owned, paid and earned media. Lovett & Stealin (2016) indicated that earned media is more impactful than paid and owned media per exposure based on their new structural model of a new TV show case. Kamal (2016) mentioned that digital marketing trends that organizations are rapidly taking up include mobility, community media/social media, social-local-mobile marketing, customized content marketing, advanced analytics, and search engine marketing (SEM)/search engine optimization (SEO). Bizhanova et al (2019) highlighted a number of features of digital marketing in the formation and development of the business structure as (1) attracting the attention of a large target audience, (2) increasing the number of sales, (3) determining the directions of competition, and (4) not requiring high material and financial resources.
Digital marketing is commonly utilized by start-ups as well as MSEs which is considered to be cost saving compared to the conventional marketing promotion. Wardhana (2015) stated that digital marketing strategy had implications for the competitive advantage of MSEs in marketing their products. Thus, there are many trainings on digital marketing for MSEs. Hapsoro et al (2019) conducted training in maximizing digital marketing strategy which is specifically designed for MSEs in Semarang City. Kader et al (2018) suggested FB-ads and e-mail marketing digital marketing model to increase sales volume for MSEs. Oktaviani & Rustandi (2018) mentioned that digital marketing in building brand awareness was done by managing Instagram social media by carrying out activities in the form of advertisements, taglines, and implementing mix techniques marketing such as personal selling, sales promotion and public relations as an effort to build a brand awareness of the knitted industrial products of Binong Jati. Considering the importance of digital marketing, this paper aims to analyze digital marketing used by MSEs during this Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, the objectives are (1) to identify digital marketing used by MSEs before and during Covid-19 pandemic, and (2) to analyze the obstacles and challenges in utilizing digital marketing by MSEs.

METHODS
The research was conducted in Bogor City, West Java, Indonesia. Bogor City is located around 60 km from Jakarta and is considered as one of the cities that has supported the metropolitan city of Jakarta. The survey was conducted from August to September 2020.
This study employed primary and secondary data. Primary data are the source of research data obtained directly or at the first hand from the original source in the form of interviews, observations, or others to the people or object of the study. Primary data were collected by questionnaire survey through google form. We spread the information of questionnaire through the WhatsApp group of Masyarakat Cinta Bogor (MCB) or Bogor Love Community as well as other WhatsApp groups.
The questionnaires included the profile of business actors and their business, utilization of digital marketing before and during Covid-19 as well as obstacles and challenges in utilizing digital marketing. A total of 27 persons of MSEs filled up the questionnaire. Based on the data collected by online survey, there were two respondents (male and female; using digital marketing and not) selected for in-depth interview. Secondary data were gathered from the website of Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises as well as other relevant literatures.
The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics using tabulation. Through the tabulation, the characteristics of respondents were described. Furthermore, the use of digital marketing of respondents was identified and compared before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sugiyono (2014) mentioned that descriptive methods are used to describe the collected data without intending to make general conclusions or generalizations. Istijanto (2009) mentioned that descriptive analysis aims to change a set of raw data into a form that is easier to understand in the form of more concise information.
The advance of ICT has forced the business actors to adapt and adopt ICT technology to improve their competitiveness. Digital marketing is one of the most used ICT technologies in the present time. Not only big-scale companies, but MSEs are also required to apply digital marketing in order to improve their competitiveness. Furthermore, the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has forced the government to implement regulations that restrict movement of people. This condition encouraged the utilization of digital marketing. This study aimed to clarify the changes of digital marketing utilization, obstacles, and challenges in utilizing digital marketing of MSEs in Bogor City before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the results, recommendations are constructed to improve the utilization of digital marketing of MSEs ( Figure 2).

RESULTS
The country declared the first case of Covid-19 on March 2, 2020. Jakarta as the capital city of Indonesia implemented restricted movement (PSBB) on April 7, 2020. Bogor, which is located around 60 km from Jakarta, followed to implement restricted movement on April 15, 2020. Thus, in this paper we categorized before the Covid-19 pandemic as the period up to April 14, 2020 and during the Covid-19 pandemic from April 15, 2020 onwards.
This section is divided into three parts, i.e., characteristics of respondents, utilization of digital marketing as well as obstacles and challenges of digital marketing for the MSEs. Firstly, characteristics of respondents include age, sex, the age of business, and field of business. Secondly, utilization of digital marketing describes the media used by MSEs, such as marketplace, mobile apps, or social media as well as payment method. Lastly, obstacles and challenges of MSEs in utilizing digital marketing are discussed.

Characteristics of Respondents
A total of 27 persons has participated in completing the questionnaire. Table 2 shows the characteristics of respondents. Several points deserve mentioning. Firstly, the average age of respondents is 44 years old, with 60 years old being the oldest and 21 years old the youngest. Secondly, in terms of gender, there are 18 females and 9 males. These characteristics of age in 40s and mostly females seem to be the common phenomena in MSEs as also discovered by Jahroh & Suprapti (2018) and Jahroh & Purnasih (2017). Thirdly, the age of business is 45 months, with the oldest being established in 2000 and the youngest in July 2020. The fact that some businesses started to be established during the Covid-19 pandemic shows that business actors see business opportunities during the pandemic. Lastly, in terms of business field, food ranked the highest while some combined food and others such as beverages, clothes, etc. This is in line with Rohmah (2020) in which foods and beverage businesses, including those of frozen foods, are considered as the high business opportunity during the Covid-19 pandemic. As a matter of fact, in the marketplace tokopedia, in the period July-September 2020, foods and beverages are included in the top five most popular products (Wartaekonomi, 2020).
According to the revenue of respondents, the majority earned below 300 million rupiah per year, which makes their businesses categorized as micro enterprises.
There are only few respondents who earned above 300 million rupiah or below 2.5 billion rupiah per year to make them categorized as small enterprises. Therefore, the respondents of this study are included in microsmall enterprises (MSEs). There are 14 out of 27 MSEs that changed or diversified during the pandemic. There are some MSEs which were selling non-food before the pandemic while during the pandemic they added food to sell considering that the demand of food is high during the pandemic.

Utilization of Digital Marketing
In terms of digital marketing, in this study we grouped digital marketing into marketplace, social media, mobile apps and WhatsApp group. Most respondents used marketplace of tokopedia and shopee, social media of Facebook and Instagram, or mobile apps of go-food and grab-food. As for the WhatsApp group, all respondents belonged to groups for communication; however, they also utilized the groups to offer their products.  Table 3 presents the distribution of MSEs in utilizing digital marketing before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, 21 out of 27 respondents or around 78% has been using digital marketing. It seems that the respondents are familiar with digital technology. According to the survey of APJII, in West Java around 71.6 % of the population has been using internet (ISC, 2020). Therefore, it is not surprising that 78 % of the respondents has been using digital marketing, considering Bogor is one of the cities in West Java where the internet connection is relatively better than in the rural areas. The majority used social media as digital marketing, followed by WhatsApp group. The use of social media as digital marketing is common for MSEs, with Facebook and Instagram to be the most common social media used (ES et al, (2017); Febriyantoro and Arisandi (2018)). The proportion of sales through digital marketing was around 45 % of the total sales. During the pandemic, the use of digital marketing increased by around 11 %, from 21 to 24 out of 27 respondents. The majority of respondents utilized social media and WhatsApp groups. The proportion of sales through digital marketing was around 71 % of the total sales. The increasing trend of sales in online transaction implies that digital marketing is important in MSEs business.
Based on the change before and during the pandemic, several points deserved mentioning. Firstly, the respondents considered the importance of digital marketing, especially during the pandemic when the government implemented restricted movement. Secondly, most respondents used social media and WhatsApp group to sell their products. It is in line with the research by Febriyantoro & Arisandi (2018) that WhatsApp is the second most used media in digital marketing next to Instagram. In addition, in terms of social messaging, whatsapp is the most used messaging with a total user of around 91.5 % (ISC, 2020). Thirdly, the highest increase was the use of WhatsApp group for digital marketing. It is predicted that they know the people in the group; therefore, they may have higher trust in selling or buying foods. This might also explain why the use of marketplace is relatively low. They considered the competition in the marketplace to be quite high whereas in the WhatsApp group the demand might arise as a part of empathy as one group or community. Lastly, the proportion of sales through digital marketing was higher during the pandemic than before.

Obstacles and Challenges in Utilizing Digital Marketing
Majority of the respondents realized the importance of digital marketing, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of them have challenged themselves to use the information technology. Twelve persons or around 44 % of the total respondents mentioned that they increased their revenue during the pandemic with an average increase of 43 %. All the respondents had their business field in food, food and others, or beverage. It seems that the demand of food through digital marketing during the pandemic has increased. People are worried about going to the market and prefer to buy their necessities online. Meanwhile, 10 persons or 37 % of the total respondents experienced a decrease of their revenue during the pandemic with an average decrease of 51 %. The majority of respondents mentioned some obstacles to overcome in digital marketing. Firstly, they did not have enough time for digital marketing, which required them to frequently check it. Through in-depth interview, a respondent mentioned that although digital marketing increased the sales when the customers could not come to her food stall, she experienced quite hard time in managing her Instagram and whatsapp groups where the customers demanded quick responses. Secondly, although they realized that pictures are important to get the customers' attention, they still could not produce good pictures of their products. Thirdly, they were concerned about the delivery and engagement cost when they joined the mobile apps. Through in-depth interview, a respondent pointed out that she should increase the selling price by around 30 % for covering the tax and engagement fees. Some of her customers who live quite far also complained about the higher delivery cost than the food price. In addition, she also mentioned some difficulties in operating the mobile apps as well as time lagging. Considering all the obstacles, the majority joined social media and WhatsApp group and utilized them to offer their products.
They mentioned several challenges they faced in digital marketing. Firstly, they are challenged to get many followers of their social media. Some respondents mentioned that they had Instagram but due to their few followers, they did not get as many responses as they expected. Secondly, digital marketing opens opportunities for bigger market; hence, some respondents assumed they needed to prepare their products well before competing in the marketplace. This market expansion opportunity is also suited with the urban lifestyle which is in line with the strength of e-commerce as stated by Febriantoro (2018). Lastly, it is a challenge to make interesting content as marketing content in offering their products through social media. Some respondents stated that they could not take a good picture and deliver a good content for their social media.

Managerial Implications
Based on the results of this study, there are several managerial implications for the MSEs in implementing digital marketing. For MSEs having been using digital marketing, firstly, a practical training on how to operate mobile apps application as well as to optimize the use of social media and whatsapp group is necessary.
There are still some respondents who just used digital marketing without optimizing and exploring all the functions they could apply. Furthermore, it is important to manage their digital marketing as well as to increase their followers in social media. Secondly, a training on taking a good picture as well as creating a good marketing content is necessary. Some respondents faced difficulties in creating good content of their social media, they did not know how to take a good display and picture of their products to be uploaded as a good content that can attract followers and others to react to their social media. Lastly, in the early stage it is important to supervise them in order to maintain and conduct simple analysis on their digital marketing performance. At present, some of them mentioned that they just followed the trend after seeing their friends using social media and WhatsApp group to sell their products. Therefore, it is important to analyze who their customer segments are, what kind of social media their customers are using, what kind of content that gets the most reactions. These kinds of information will enable MSEs to efficiently decide the most appropriate digital marketing for their business and build a good content suited to their customer segments.
There are around 11percent of respondents who have not utilized digital marketing yet. Thus, there are two points deserved mentioning in order to increase the use of digital marketing of MSEs. Firstly, it is important to introduce digital marketing to those who have not utilized it yet. A training in order to increase the awareness MSEs of the importance of digital marketing can be conducted. Through in-depth interview, he was not sure that digital marketing could increase his sales and is appropriate for his customer segments. Secondly, a supervision is needed in the early stage until they can manage their own digital marketing. This supervision will enable them to choose which appropriate digital marketing that suits their customer segments as well as to build a good content.
In short, good digital infrastructure is a must in developing digital marketing. Internet connections as well as affordable internet package fee are necessary in conducting digital marketing for MSEs. This is in accordance with some practices experienced by respondents where there are some time lag and even unsent messages which might be due to the internet connections or infrastructure.

Conclusions
Digital marketing has emerged as an essential marketing means during the Covid-19 pandemic. The respondents of MSEs in this study realized the importance of digital marketing, which the majority have already utilized and whose use has even increased during the pandemic.
The results of this study showed that firstly, the majority of MSEs utilized social media and WhatsApp group as their digital marketing before and during the pandemic. Secondly, the respondents were aware of their limited time and skills in presenting good marketing content in their social media. However, they realized that it offers an opportunity to expand their market.

Recommendations
As digital marketing is important in marketing practice during the Covid-19 pandemic while increasing the revenues, it is important to disseminate digital marketing to MSEs and prepare them to maximize its utilization. Currently, the majority of the population use social media, and MSEs can utilize them to market their products. Based on this research, there are two recommendations to increase the use of digital marketing for MSEs. First is the training to utilize digital marketing. Second is supervising MSEs in real practice of digital marketing by providing them with consultation whenever they face problems in digital marketing.