Digital Marketing Ecosystem Perspective of Regional Featured Product in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia ()
1. Introduction
The development of technology in the digital direction is currently increasingly rapid and inevitable. In this era, humans in general have a new lifestyle that cannot be separated from all-electronic devices. Technology has become a tool that can help most of human needs to make it easier to do any task and work. This important role of technology has brought human civilization into the digital era.
Government policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic have briefly become one of the inhibiting factors for a number of important economic activities, namely Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), due to reduced direct interaction. However, Indonesia’s readiness in internet connection, which is currently using 5G technology, even with an integrated and protected Electronic Information and Transaction System (ITE), can provide solutions for changing business models that are more varied and efficient. Of course, this does not impact too much for Indonesia’s economic stability which is able to grow quite high at 5.0 percent in the first quarter of 2022, despite experiencing an Omicron wave (Kementerian Keuangan Republik Indonesia, 2022).
Indonesian people in general are enthusiastic about adopting a digital life, mainly triggered by internet penetration and the use of smart phones which continues to increase every year. The digital economy is here to provide greater opportunities to reach the market. The development of the digital economy can enable the emergence of new business models, integration, collaboration and synergy between business sectors and stakeholders, as well as changes to business models in existing sectors. This condition is a trigger for a good entrepreneurial ecosystem for Indonesia to increase the number of entrepreneurs and creative economy actors to boost the national economy (Puslitbang Aptika dan IKP, 2019).
According to data released by the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers (APJII), internet users in Indonesia have increased significantly every year. Currently, in approximately 77 percent of Indonesia’s population is already using the internet. Before the pandemic the figure was only 175 million. Meanwhile, in 2022, internet users in Indonesia will reach around 210 million. This means that there will be an additional 35 million internet users in Indonesia (CNBC Indonesia, 2022).
Based on the latest data released by the 2022 Data Report, it shows that the digital ecosystem is growing rapidly in Indonesia and creates the potential for a new center of economic growth. The data release shows that in 2022 Indonesia’s population will reach 277.7 million. Surprisingly, the smartphone usage data reached 370.1 million, which exceeds the total population of Indonesia with a ratio of 131%; which is an increase of 3.6% from 2021. The number of internet users is 204.7 million (73%) and the number of active social media users is 191 million (68%) (Data Reportal, 2022). The impact of the digital economy in Indonesia is that at least 30% of online trade is new consumption, capturing needs that were previously unreachable, providing 26 million jobs, especially in the field of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Another impact is that consumers outside Java save 11% - 25% from shopping online and more than 35% of the income generated from e-commerce is generated by women, compared to offline retail which is only around 15%. Existing data shows that MSME onboarding has only reached 13.7 million so that the transformation of digital MSMEs has only reached around 22%. It needs optimization to spread its benefits (Bisnis Indonesia Weekly, 2021).
Indonesia is known as a country that has a variety of superior products at the village, sub-district, district and provincial levels or better known as regional superior products. According to Ahmadjayadi (2001), Regional Superior Products (PUD) are regional products that have characteristics and uniqueness that other regions do not have as well as reliable competitiveness and can provide job opportunities to local communities. Besides being known as one of the largest producers of coconut and clove commodities in Indonesia, the North Sulawesi regional plantation sector is also known to have a regional-specific commodity, namely sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) which has the potential to be preserved and enhanced by small industries or SMEs.
In addition, the development of MSMEs needs to be optimized, with the existence of MSMEs making a major contribution to the country’s economic development, MSMEs can also reduce the unemployment rate in Indonesia. On the other hand, there are many potentials that characterize this local product of North Sulawesi Province which can develop into a superior product nationally. However, this can only work if this product is widely introduced through marketing media that is easily accessible by all people. This is a problem faced by business actors to be able to compete in both local and foreign markets, meanwhile promotion that has not yet fully developed. The development of MSMEs must be in line with the times when all business actors are required to adapt to digital technology, one of which is digital marketing technology.
According to Sánchez-Franco et al. (2014) digital marketing is a result of evolutionary marketing when companies use digital media channels for most of their marketing. The benefits of implementing digital marketing according to Kotler and Keller (2014) include a wider and targeted market reach, maintaining communication between sellers and customers, and increasing sales. On the other hand, Regional Superior Products describe the ability of regions to produce products, create value, utilize real resources, provide employment opportunities, generate income for the community and government, have prospects for increasing productivity and investment. A product is said to be superior if it has competitiveness so that it is able to ward off competing products in the domestic market and/or penetrate the export market (Ahmadjayadi, 2001).
Digital marketing is not there to explain or just a variety of applications and platform features. But also about the mindset and new perspectives of the human resources. In order for a tool/app to operate properly, certain behavioral structures are needed. Digital marketing is man-made and man-used that requires certain social management to operate. Ardaneswari et al. (2012) explain that there are 4 main components in talking about technology development, namely: technoware (hardware elements), infoware (information users), humanware (human elements), and organware (element of management and social environment).
The development of digital marketing solutions needs to pay attention to these elements. Because they are forced to go online, even though the value proposition is offline. It is important to understand that digital marketing should not be considered as a single business solution or any business. Integration with various other business processes is important. So it is hoped that the role of digital marketing in the process of business actors is more supportive of an integrated marketing system through an ecosystem. That is why, that support from stakeholders can strengthen digital marketing strategies to market a product, it is felt that it is more effective in achieving targets to the market. Seeing the huge potential of internet and social media users in Indonesia, the importance of the triple helix collaboration role is to increase the added value of products that can directly improve the standard of living of the people.
2. Literature Study
2.1. Digital Marketing
Since the trend of the emergence of the internet of things in the early 2000s, marketing trends have begun to multiply towards digital. So since then digital marketing has increasingly become the choice of many business people to be able to reach the target market whose results can be more integrated, scalable and efficient (Gupta et al., 2017; Arifin et al., 2019; Zhang & Watson, 2020).
Digital Marketing is a general term for targeted, scalable, and interactive marketing of goods or services using digital technology. The main purpose of digital marketing is to promote brands, shape preferences and increase sales traffic through several digital marketing techniques. Another term for digital marketing is online marketing or internet marketing. Digital marketing is actually almost similar to marketing in general. However, what makes the difference is the device used (Wati et al., 2020).
This is a marketing strategy and tactic that is carried out with the help of digital technology. The basic concept is still the same, only the platforms and media have changed. The ideas and ideas are still the same, only the tools have changed. The concept is still the same, but the practice is different (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).
When we talk about the marketing concept, the main thing is to understand our customers, or (Kotler et al., 2021) call it the digital customer journey. Indeed, in the development of digital marketing, it encourages changes in customers. So that raises a few questions:
● How customers search for information?
● How do customers provide reviews or feedback?
● How do they do self-actualization?
However, Kartajaya & Setiawan (2014) argue that although marketing in this digital era seems very technological, the first question is always about the essence of marketing, namely who the customer is. What technology is used will follow later. In the era of digitization, the main solution is the integration between online platforms and offline platforms, or this is popularly known as the OMNI Platform. Because many businesses fail precisely because they are forced online, even though the value proposition is offline. It is important to understand that digital marketing should not be considered as a single business solution or any business. Integration with various other business processes is important.
According to Wati et al. (2020), Digital marketing consists of website, social media and search engine. Website is a collection of interrelated, publicly accessible web pages that share a single domain name. While social media marketing is also categorized as one of digital marketing to increase visibility on the internet and to promote products and services. Meanwhile, Search Engine is a special type of website to collect a list of websites that can be found on the internet in a database which then displays this index list based on the keywords or keywords searched by the user; consisting of: 1) Search Engine Optimization or SEO that works to increasing visitability by using advertising and optimization with a reciprocal cost. SEO is an effort to increase the website on the first page of Google with a strategy or placement of keywords in an article or content. It has two major components such as, on page optimization and off page optimization; 2) Email marketing is an act or activity of sending commercial messages such as promos, product offers, discounts, membership offers and so on to a group of people using email media; 3) Online Ads is a type of digital marketing is almost the same as other types of advertising. That is using the YouTube platform or other media.
2.2. The Concept of Digital Ecosystem
A digital ecosystem is a set of technical infrastructure, based on P2P distributed software technology that transports, discovers, and connects services and information via Internet links that enable network transactions, and distribution of all digital “objects” contained within the infrastructure. Such “digital world organisms” include any useful digital representation expressed by language (formal or natural) that can be interpreted and processed (by computer and/or human software). Meanwhile, the Business Ecosystem is an economic community that is supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—“organisms of the business world”. This economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who themselves are members of the ecosystem (European Commission, 2007).
According to Korpela et al. in Acs and Song (2020) digital ecosystem is a self-regulating, limited, and sustainable system consisting of heterogeneous digital actors that focuses on interactions between entities to increase system utility, obtain and share information, internal cooperation , and system innovation.
● Digital Infrastructure is a facility between users to display new forms of learning by creating innovation paths (Henfridsson & Bygstad, 2013).
● Users or tech savvy who interact directly with digital technology (Von Hippel, 2006).
2.3. Digital Marketing Ecosystem
The data environment has progressed significantly in the last two decades from a relatively controllable environment within the company, to one that is massive and growing but also dispersed in the marketing ecosystem (Zhang and Watson, 2020).
As technology advances rapidly, consumer interactions with mobile and smart devices generate massive amounts of data via social media posts, location-based photo and video uploads, and data used and living habits via sensors from IoT devices. Balducci & Marinova (2018) define unstructured data as a unit of data in which various types of information are available that offer a relatively equal representation of its multifaceted nature without any pre-determined organization or numerical value. This of course creates a big disruption with increasingly unstructured data. It takes foresight from digital marketers to manage the characteristics of such data.
Digital marketing can be seen as activities, institutions, and processes facilitated by digital technology to create, communicate, and deliver value for customers and other stakeholders (Kannan & Hongshuang in Arifin et al., 2019). It is the process of using digital technology that creates a certain value through the customer experience and through interactions between customers.
Digital marketing itself enables a series of adaptive digital touch points covering marketing activities, institutions, processes, and customers. Significantly, customer growth is increasing at least 20% every year due to changes in customer habits who switch to digital technology and younger customers are digital orientations that enter the ranks of buyers (Bughin, 2015). Seeing this, of course, it is inevitable that new clusters will emerge both from the customer side and marketing actors to utilize technology as an efficient marketing channel.
The digital marketing ecosystem consists of internet marketing and social media marketing. However, this pattern will be effective if the channels for communication and service to customers are integrated (Gupta et al., 2017).
In digital marketing the importance of something called integration. In the perception of the digital ecosystem, marketing activities are an integration of the relationship of all participants in the distribution channel, both producers and sellers, other recipients and consumers, based on legal rules for the implementation of digital platform formation so as to create optimal value for all ecosystem actors, because digital infrastructure and marketing must have a balance of values.
Figure 1 below presents a digital ecosystem model in a marketing platform, which consists of three main parts, such a consumer ecosystem, producer ecosystem, and core communication.
The consumer ecosystem works to ensure all user needs and requirements are met and to attract them with convenience and functionality. The consumer’s role in the business ecosystem is determined through the marketing focus of existing activities within the ecosystem, which is fulfilled through the creation of customer experiences and involvement in the creation of shared value (Krasyuk et al., 2019). Understanding consumers is the basic thing when selling, so the way to understand the audience is to understand who the brand is targeting, the goals of the brand, where do consumers usually access brand information from, and the motivations and barriers when buying a product (Azzahara, 2016). In fulfilling consumer wants and needs, business actors must understand that consumers are rational beings. Considered a rational person whereby consumers make informed decisions as part of the trading process. Customers are not only
looking for services and products but also experiences that fulfill their key wants and needs. Traditionally the consumer decision-making process consists of five phases, which involve the five steps that consumers go through when buying a product or service (Kotler and Keller, 2014). A marketer must understand these steps to properly move consumers to buy products, communicate effectively to consumers and close sales (Stankevich, 2017). To make purchasing decisions, Homburg et al. (2015) argue that elements of fun, beauty, symbolic meaning, creativity and emotion can enrich and expand understanding of consumer behavior. In addition, the role of technological developments and new levels of consumer interaction must also be considered as an important control aspect in the sales process both online and offline.
According to Lipkin and Heinonen (2022), consumer ecosystems can create convenience and functionality which is a value in a relationship between marketers and customers. To create synergy in creating convenience and functionality within the customer ecosystem, we need to understand that customer ecosystems are formed from individual-driven customer ecosystems, namely consumers have their own knowledge about what they should consume based on the right timing or mood to create a convenience value. Apart from that, the creation of a customer ecosystem is also formed from Brand-driven customer ecosystems, namely associating the fulfillment of their needs based on brands that are functionally and technically qualified. Thus, customers get a positive experience when marketers can work according to expectations and even exceed consumer expectations. The third aspect is socially driven customer ecosystems, where the social aspect becomes an ideal place that influences the fulfillment of customer needs. Social aspects in the form of peers and co-customers, family and friends.
Furthermore, the importance of sales channel’s roles in creating an effective and dynamic consumer ecosystem is very significant. Value creation in the form of adapting the concept of customer wants, the ability to respond efficiently to interactions, increasing customer influence, and managing customer value appropriately. The implementation of these things can increase qualified performance for dynamic customer orientation (Ramani and Kumar in Liu et al., 2011).
The function of the producer ecosystem is to provide supporting functions, facilitating business and lowering barriers to entry. The need to involve customers in the innovation development process has become a prerequisite for sustaining company life, where each customer requires certain products and services (Krasyuk et al., 2019). Trefilova (2016) explained the role of organizations from both policy makers and service providers to integrate consumers into the innovation process, offering to involve consumers at every stage of innovation development and implementation through crowdfunding, testing, and focus groups. In line with that, Trianto and Novani (2022) conclude that it is hoped that the government and service providers will increase value in order to enhance the experience of using the new system, as well as support for alternative decision-making for governments and service providers to improve the new cross-border market system.
The current business situation is very intense. In this high competition, the competitors will surround us both directly and indirectly. However, along with developments in technology and communication, making it easier to enter a business (Bresnahan and Greenstein, 2003). Consequently, barriers to entry also increase, creating competitive advantages and innovative products and services, perhaps untenable. Innovations that competitors can imitate in the long run, novelty may not be sufficiently sustainable to sustain a business advantage. Yet, an adaptive ability by business owner seems to be important to survive, let say many companies have fallen due to late adoption of newest technology in their operational. For this reason, maintaining an adaptive competitive advantage that will create a sustainable advantage is very important, which of course can be achieved with a business partnership.
Jaroenwanit et al. (2020) in their research provides an overview of effective business channels depending on where companies with certain product characteristics are located. Some tips include increasing direct sales or social network marketing such as Facebook and group pages; participating in various seminars is another platform where community enterprises can exchange knowledge and experience in group management and product processing; and seeking partnership activities in the form of contractual agreements, joint ventures and equity alliances.
The core of the digital ecosystem provides communication components, infrastructure requirements, necessary technology base, and potential innovative companies that also implement functionality for interactions between consumers and producers.
On the marketing side, the marketing ecosystem is an interconnected system of actors involved working together that affects a company’s ability to understand the market and seize opportunities. The marketing ecosystem consists of several factors including markets, technology, socio-economics, geopolitics, and the natural environment (Zhang and Watson, 2020). These factors will work simultaneously, infrastructure and technology need to be prepared by macro environment actors in the external environment such as policy makers and taste makers. In addition, other stakeholders focus on business ethics and corporate social responsibility (Freeman, 2010). Thus, a broader view of the marketing environment can increase the external and internal capacity of the company, have the ability to experiment, and the ability to provide attractive offers to customers in the long term.
The company’s ability to communicate is considered important to create customer experience. It includes the general experience, including search, acquisition, consumption, and after-sales experience, and may include multiple retail channels (Verhoef et al., 2009).
Adequacy of customer data is very important to understand consumers. Therefore, market and technology trends over the last two decades have contributed to increasingly rich data and deeper understanding of consumers (Zhang and Watson, 2020). Data is becoming increasingly complex, and much of the relevant data now resides in ecosystems outside of a company’s direct control. Understanding how diverse data and analytics technologies can enable companies to understand marketing ecosystem factors empirically and quantitatively. Thus, companies can extract market insights from iterative data analytics processes to create unique value for customers.
Subsequently, from Figure 1 above, it can be clearly seen that there is a paradigm shift that is influenced by the ability of stakeholders to create a digital marketing ecosystem. Optimum utilization of several opportunities in the digital era must be intensified. Some of these take the form of increasingly personalized customer decision-making, unlimited interaction, supported by economic disruption that creates a sharing economy, as well as fast technology updates.
3. Regional Superior Products of North Sulawesi Province
In the context of regional economic development efforts, an inventory of regional potential is absolutely necessary in order to determine the development pattern policy, both sectorally and multisectorally. One of the steps for inventorying the regional economic potential is to take an inventory of the potential, mainstay and superior products of each sub-sector and district level.
Regional superior products describe the region’s ability to produce products, create value, make real use of resources, provide employment opportunities, generate income for the community and government, have prospects for increasing productivity and investment. A product is said to be superior if it has competitiveness so that it is able to ward off competing products in the domestic market and/or penetrate the export market (Ferdian et al., 2019).
According to Ahmadjayadi (2001), Regional Superior Products are regional products that have characteristics and uniqueness that other regions do not have and are highly competitive and can provide job opportunities to local communities. Regional superior products are also environmentally friendly and market oriented both locally and nationally and regionally.
Regional Leading Products according to the Regulation of the Minister of Home Affairs Number 9 of 2014 are products, both in the form of goods and services, produced by cooperatives, small and medium scale businesses that have the potential to be developed by utilizing all the resources owned by the region, both natural resources, natural resources, and natural resources. human resources and local culture, as well as generating income for the community and the government which is expected to become an economic strength for the region and the local community as a potential product that has competitiveness, marketability, and impetus towards and able to enter the global market. Meanwhile, the so-called development is the efforts made by the government, regional government and the community in developing regional superior products through planning, organizing, financing, monitoring, controlling, and evaluating activities.
North Sulawesi province is in a strategic position because it is located on the Pacific Rim which is directly opposite East Asian countries and Pacific countries. This strategic position makes North Sulawesi Indonesia’s gateway to the Pacific and has the potential to become a center of economic growth. This province also supports the role of Sulawesi Island as a center for production and processing of agricultural, plantation, fishery and nickel mining products at the national level.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy of North Sulawesi in the fourth quarter of 2021 grew positively by 3.38% (yoy), a slight increase compared to the previous quarter which grew 3.15% (yoy). Overall in 2021, the North Sulawesi economy shows indications of recovery with positive growth of 4.16% (yoy) after contracting by −0.99% (yoy) in 2020. This growth rate is relatively higher than the national economy which grew 3.69% (yoy) (Bank Indonesia, 2022).
Several sectors that support local economic growth are the agricultural and trade sectors, which are the mainstay sectors that have regional superior products that are nationally and internationally competitive (Bank Indonesia, 2022). The regional superior products include: copra, coconut, skipjack tuna, sales of copra, flying fish/malalugis, food stalls (mixed), cloves, corn, grocery stores and carp cultivation (Republika, 2022).
4. Methodology
The purpose of writing this article is to get an overview of the concept of Digital Marketing Ecosystem in developing regional superior products in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia by using literature study research methods. The literature study is used in writing this article. It is a series of activities related to methods of collecting library data, reading and taking notes, and managing research materials (Melfianora, n.d.). In this research, the steps for writing a literature study systematically consist of collecting data from various sources that are relevant to the state of the research object, including journals on the digital economy or business digital, credible articles from both the mass media and online media regarding reports on the economy and existing business performance both in regional, provincial or national scale, as well as other sources including copies of national laws and regulations, national statistics and regional or provincial regulations. After that, conceptualization was carried out according to the research questions, and analyzed according to the research objectives which examined what is the role of the digital marketing ecosystem at the regional scale of the province. Eventually, conclusions are drawn about the relationship between the study of literature and the actual situation in the object of research to get a real picture of the research implication.
5. Results and Discussion
The Evidence of Digital Marketing Ecosystem of North Sulawesi Regional Superior Product
Consumers are not only looking for products or services but also experiences that fulfill their main wants and needs (Lipkin and Heinonen, 2022). Therefore, the importance of the role of consumers in a business ecosystem that focuses on marketing activities to create experiences and create value (Krasyuk et al., 2019). The customer experience encompasses every aspect of a company’s offering—quality of customer service, along with advertising, packaging, product and service features, ease of use, and reliability (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016).
In reaching consumers online, it is necessary to pay attention to the added value obtained from the experience of consumers seeking product information appropriately for their needs. On the other hand, marketers increase innovation capabilities in penetrating the market, such as the use of social media and multimedia. Creating value in a relationship encompasses the concept of customers, the company’s ability to efficiently respond to interactions with them, increase customer influence, and manage customer value. This can improve performance and customer-oriented relative performance (Krasyuk et al., 2019).
We obtained the case study from Moningka et al. (2022) stated one of the regional superior products such as Nira Aren in MSME Kertina’s Home Industry, North Sulawesi. Product development through digital marketing is able to increase the awareness of customers which leads to an increase in the income of business actors. In the implementation of marketing through digital marketing used in the form of social media (Facebook, Email, WhatsApp business) is an effort to introduce products to the public. To increase Brand Awareness, the following efforts were made:
1) Content Marketing (Multimedia) which focuses on introducing products or promoting products, besides that it also focuses on creating product content to introduce it to the public. In addition to using Content Marketing, you can also use brand ambassadors as brand ambassadors who market brands or promote a product from Kertina’s Home Industry UMKM.
2) Social Media Marketing to market a product or introduce a product. Applications used to develop Brand Awareness are Facebook, WhatsApp, Email, where this application can be used to view a product and place an order for products from Kertina’s Home Industry SMEs.
3) Affiliate Marketing is using affiliate services that will help market the product or cooperate with influence services to market the product. In addition, Kertina’s Home Industry UMKM has collaborated with several universities and polytechnics to create Social Media Digital Marketing Content to market products.
4) Fintech, where Kertina’s Home Industry UMKM will also develop promotions using the Ovo, Dana, Lazada applications to make purchases and transactions.
In addition, several efforts to reach consumers are the process of market penetration through partnerships with the government. Marketing through exhibitions and registration of local products through e-catalogs managed by the Government Goods and Services Procurement Policy Institute or LKPP can be an alternative solution for market expansion and more massive absorption of local products (Utami et al., 2022). The Government Goods/Services Procurement Policy Institute (LKPP) changes the electronic catalog business process to be faster and simpler. One of the goals is to attract more small and micro business actors to participate in the procurement of government goods/services and to encourage the acceleration of the use of domestic products (LKPP, 2022).
In addition, the North Sulawesi local government will continue to look for new markets to promote superior export products from North Sulawesi through technical guidance and training to improve product quality and human resources from local industry players (Republika, 2022). The new market can be in the form of domestic market and international market. Especially for the international market, marketers can take advantage of the momentum of the post-pandemic economic revival. Quoted from the DJKN Kementerian Keuangan (2021) in 2020, the agriculture, plantation, livestock, fisheries, trade, and tourism sectors have contributed around US$776 million to the export balance of North Sulawesi Province, an increase of 1.19 percent from the previous year. North Sulawesi Province is one of the provinces with extraordinary potential in various sectors. Of the total 65 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), around 295 thousand of them are in North Sulawesi Province (Sari, 2021). Therefore, North Sulawesi government made various efforts to increase the marketing enthusiasm of business actors, where between 2010-2015 through various forms of assistance with a total aid fund of 29 trillion for the APBN and for APBD funds of Rp. 3 trillion (Dinas Koperasi, UKM Daerah Provinsi Sulawesi Utara, 2021).
Another effort to facilitate the development of digital marketing for business actors for operational effectiveness is where Bank Indonesia representatives from North Sulawesi Province continue to make efforts to maintain the smooth running of non-cash payment transactions. Efforts are being made to encourage the National Non-Cash Movement (GNNT) through Digital Financial Services (LKD) and electronification of various types of transactions, both Government to People (G to P), People to Government (P to G) and People to People (P to P). Bank Indonesia has launched the Quick Response (QR) Code standard for payments through server-based electronic money applications, electronic wallets, or mobile banking called QR Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS). The use of QRIS in North Sulawesi has experienced an increase in the number of merchants, especially after changes in community transaction patterns during the Covid-19 pandemic, where more and more people prefer non-cash transactions (Bank Indonesia, 2022). Some of the ways that marketers have done include optimizing the QR Code and Facebook Marketplace, namely by making QR Codes online on websites that are not paid and this is an innovation to introduce local or village products to the general public digitally (Choirina and Reinold, 2021).
Therefore, in accordance with the purpose of writing this article is to get an overview of the concept of Digital Marketing Ecosystem in developing regional superior products in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia by using literature study research methods. The literature study used in writing this article is an assessment of relevant research journals, studies, dissertations, and mass media. This article has built and constructed based on empirical research that has been carried out, mapping of articles and related studies. The results of this research certainly need to be further developed by looking for more case study samples of regional superior products. However, some of the samples and descriptions above at least illustrated how the implementation of digital marketing that needs to be empowered. This is of course considering the enormous natural potential in this area, but the latest marketing knowledge is still not in line with it.
6. Conclusion
The province of North Sulawesi has a lot of great economic potential, along with the potential for Indonesia’s economic recovery which is quite significant. The marketing environment in this area is quite intensive, where several regional superior product businesses have begun to rely on various variations of digital marketing to market their products. Consumer ecosystems are generally in the reach of social media. However, not all regional superior products have been accommodated. As a result, the role of actors in the local digital marketing ecosystem still needs to be carried out with various empowerment efforts. Meanwhile, to expand the marketing network through the distribution channel ecosystem, it is proven that the role of local governments and banking institutions is very large in this regard. Thus, the competitiveness of marketers for regional superior products is expected to increase in the future in line with good synergy between stakeholders.