Maintaining Sustainability Competitiveness in Food Entrepreneurship During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Small and medium businesses face tight competition with more and more entrepreneurs starting their businesses in the effort to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Entrepreneurs should have sustainable competitiveness so that they can survive during competition. Sustainability can be achieved through the creation of creative products, using business models that suit consumer needs and technological developments, one of which being utilizing marketing through social media and joining online communities as a medium to share experiences with fellow business people. This study examines the role of creative products, business models, and social media marketing in building competitiveness with online communities as a mediating variable. Based on primary data from a survey of 150 food entrepreneurs in the Greater Jakarta area, hypotheses were tested by the use of the Structural of Equation Model (lisrel-SEM). It can be seen in the findings that the participation of entrepreneurs in the online community is influenced by product creativity but not by business models and social media marketing. Competitiveness is influenced by the online community which is followed by entrepreneurs. These findings contribute to the entrepreneurship literature with the finding that shows social media marketing and business model do not influence entrepreneurs to join online communities and build sustainability competitiveness. These findings also show that product creativity encourages entrepreneurs to join online communities to gain sustainability competitiveness.

Keywords: Product Creativity, Business Online, Social Media Marketing, Online Community, Sustainability Competitive.