indonesia's urban mobile food vendors: importance, issues, and ict potentials
DESCRIPTION
Mobile food vendors are a very common and pervasive sight in Indonesia's urban landscape. These vendors can be easily spotted offering their menus in almost all major urban residential, office, or education areas and in almost any time span of the day. Based on interviews and observations on the vending practice of mobile food vendors in Surabaya, from a study that investigates into new ways for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to support mobile microentrepreneurs, this paper portrays the daily life of Surabaya's mobile food vendors and point to important but underappreciated economic and social functions that these vendors play in Indonesia's modern urban live: supplying affordable and quality foods for middle and lower income communities, acting as a fallback occupation in time of economic downfalls, and providing additional income to further support the household. This paper also point to several obstacles that these vendors face in running and growing their business: a small customer base, limited ability to reach a larger audience, and the inability to effectively promote their trade.TRANSCRIPT
Indonesia's Urban Mobile Food Vendors: Importance, Issues,
and ICT Potentials
Rahmad DawoodSchool of Information, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Aris Eko Priyanto and Nurwahyu AlamsyahJurusan Teknik Informatika, Universitas Trunojoyo Madura
Objectives
• Mobile Microentrepreneur
• ICT• Current usage
• New form
• ICTD/ICTD4D• Information and Communication Technology for
Development
• HCI (Human Computer Interaction) lense
Methods
• Period: Mei-2011 to August-2011• Location: Surabaya, Indonesia• Interviews and participant observation• Vendors + Customers
• Residential areas• Office complexes• Schools
• Important Inputs • User-and-functionality discovery phase
Personas and Scenarios
•Both widely use in HCI• Close with users• Understand activities
•Personas• Fictitious characters • Collage of attributes & characters
•Scenarios• Fictitious series of events• Of developed personas
•No one subject encompass all aspects• Use personas & Scenarios
Importance of Urban Food Vending
1. Fallback occupation
2. Caters to middle & low income
communitieso Practical serviceo High quality foodoReasonable price.
3. Additional source of incomeo Especially true when the vendor is female.o Also member of larger immediate family
1. Fallback occupation
2. Caters to middle and lower income communities
3. Additional source of income
1. Limited number of customersa. Limited rangeb. Limited potential customers
2. Limited ability to expand customer-basea. Too physicalb. Upgrade to longer-range transportationc. Extra sellers
3. Inability to effectively promote their trade.a. Use soundb. Started to use mobile phones => Younger sellers
Issues in Urban Food Vending
ICT Potentials
•Started to be use foroLocation inquiryoSocial network
•All text baseoCan be made more interactiveoLocation awareoTargeted promotion
•New business modeloShift payment to customers not sellersoFreemiumoPiecemeal pricing
Thank You