Analyzing Factors Considered by Career Housewives in Bandung, Indonesia in Using Ready-to-Cook (RTC) Product in Daily Life

Abstract

In Indonesia, the trend of Ready-to-Cook (RTC) products began to emerge in 2010, which provides more practical daily food needs by reducing cooking time. Even so, these products are often misinterpretation, that leads difficulty to penetrate the market. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of Ready-to-Cook (RTC) product segmentation including characteristics, factors considered by customers, to barriers in using the products, especially for market penetration in Bandung, West Java. The objective is to be able to determine the general barriers, hereby provide the best strategy and implementation for product penetration. This research is a qualitative method which was conducted through in-depth interviews with 12 informants using a purposive sampling method. The results of this study indicate 3 main characteristics of the target market for career housewives based on cooking frequency; every day, at least 2 times a week, and undefined. More than half of the informants misinterpreted the definition of Ready-to-Cook (RTC) products which leads to Ready-to-Eat (RTE) products, this caused high barriers which leads products perception about unhealthy ingredients, questionable quality, variety to the convenience of the product. The important factors considered by career housewives is menu variety, food quality, and convenience of food based on functional value. The current strategy is to focus on the characteristic approach of career housewives who cook every day and pursue the aspects of the product menu served to become more varied for daily meals, and convenience to keep up with the busy life of career housewives.