Day 3: What now

I returned on the 3rd day - wanting to have some concrete ideas on how MM Durian can be a better MM. My research yesterday night did leave me rather exhausted - but I had more knowledge on the issue. However, looking at the reports I realized that it was shallow of me to assume that one could try to adapt overseas convenience stores into Semarang's MM. Resources granted to these large MNCs are not as readily available to the smaller MM organization. Given that we were also dealing with franchisees and investors - care must be taken to decide what investments to improve a store could be worth it, and what were not. We had to be prudent with how we spend or I would fall behind in the core principle of cash flow "Always have cash on hand".

So things like, the shop must be decorated to have a clearer image branding, all lights switched on and colder air cons would only make it more expensive to run the store. Ideally I should be cutting costs, not adding to them.

So I turned my attention to the products available at the store. I realized that for a convenience store it would make sense to add products like shampoo and soap to those who might need it, however unlikely. However in truth, I was admittedly perplexed by the ratio of food and beverages to household necessities. In my personal opinion, for a store like MM Durian to be found along a road, we should certainly have a more exciting selection of food and beverage. At its current state, I felt like walking into MM Durian was that it was a shampoo and soap store. I didn't understand why I would need 40 varieties of each type of bathroom essentials. It is highly likely that I would be in for drinks and food rather than soap. If I wanted soap, I might have got it from a place that would be cheaper than MM Durian... like the kedai runcit opposite. The good stuff was hidden around the back of the store - like the great selection of instant noodles and drinks. However this was opinion I would keep to myself as apparently some people do buy soap and shampoo from here based on reports - but certainly few varieties rather than every item available. I strongly believed that we should change out the product selection of MM Durian.

Thinking again back to sales I thought that time sales would work. Fortunately, they were having a Ramadhan Bazaar that included flyers and some publicity. A team even came down to move promotional goods outside and play music to attract shoppers. Time for increased sales I thought. I was wrong. Dishearteningly, nobody came for the bazaar. The weather might have affected their mood. Or maybe it was because it was fasting month. Still, waiting for Ramadhan to finish wasn't a very good choice of action either. This threw economics out of the window. When price reduces, price elastic demand should technically increase and sales would increase. However there were certainly more factors that swayed this the wrong way.

At this point I also noted that MM Durian was well staffed... to the point of probably being overstaffed. There was a small problem of too many kasirs "waiting on" customers. This effects unnecessary pressure - but I appreciated that everybody was on the ball with their job. It was certainly better than receiving poor service.

So what did MM Durian lack that would attract more people? Would a banner pointing the way to MM Durian work? Do we need a caller outside the store? This were all efforts that would need either added costs or increased effort - what were the gains? That I could not have information - and kept that in mind. I'd probably ask Marketing with regards to how the relationship between promotions and sales. My customer expectations also exist as a Singaporean, and I was not of the culture so that I had to keep in mind.

Still, if all else fails, chairs and tables in the space outside MM Durian would definitely attract night crowds right? Even if sales only came in the form of cigarettes and drinks - that was still sales. MM could be a "tempat lepak" at night. From what I observed - that usually works.