KEMENTRIAN PENDIDIKAN NASIONAL

UNIVERSITAS PENDIDIKAN INDONESIA

SEKOLAH PASCASARJANA
PROGRAM STUDI DOKTOR ILMU MANAJEMEN
Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229 Bandung 40154 tlp. 70802344
E-Mail: pasacasarjana@upi.edu Website: http://www.ppsupi.org
QUIZ 1
MATA UJIAN : Manajemen Pemasaran
HARI/TANGGAL : Jumat 28 Februari 201
WAKTU : 08.40-11.10
DOSEN : PROF DR Ratih Hurriyati, M.P
PETUNJUK
1. Jawablah pertanyaan-pertanyaan dibawah ini dengan singkat dan jelas
2. Jawaban dikirim melalui rhurriyati@upi.edu
BANK BRI ATTACKS CITIES
YUSHOWADY ARTICLE
(Chief Executive Mark Plus Institute of marketing)

You are mistaken if you still believe that BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia) is a bank of the rural
area. Although it is true that BRI dominates the rural market, BRI has already started to
aggressively enter the cities. In the last three years, this bank, the largest microfinance bank
in the world, has been launching products, targeting clients in the city area. Its purpose is no
other than to create an “urban” bank image.

Since 2007, BRI launched its door prize program, Undian Untung Beliung BritAma, which
has successfully pulled in many urban clients. BRI has also ceaselessly introduced its credit
card product by setting up cooperation programs with merchants, starting from “buy one get
one free” at Blitz Megaplex to the Hyundai credit card series. Not forgetting that BRI has
also actively pulled in high networth individuals as clients through its BRI Prioritas (Priority)
service. Will BRI be successful in taking a piece of the city’s lucrative market? Will BRI’s
success story in the rural areas, that used a cultural-community approach, be copied and used
in the urban market?

Competitors Surrounding the Rural Areas

Before we investigate BRI’s strategy and tactic in attacking cities, it might be useful to
examine BRI’s core market, the micro rural market. As we all know, in this lucrative market,
BRI has a pair of strong products that dominate the market, Simpedes for funding and
Kupedes for lending. While BRI’s urban market is aggressively trying to spread its wings
wider, BRI is facing strategic challenges in the rural market, and which should not be taken
lightly. Banks that has never even glanced at the rural market before has started to
aggressively attacking an penetrating these areas. For the past couple of years, “Urban”
banks, such as Danamon, BTPN, BTN and BNI, has been offering microfinance products to
clients from the rural areas. There are still large opportunities in this segment. In general,
these areas have a low non-performing loan, high profitability and endures crisis quite well.

Danamon Bank is a relatively new player who is already quite successful in biting a part of
the rural market with its Danamon Simpan Pinjam product that offers lilliputian credits. BNI,
who has been known for its corporate banking and its credit cards, has also started to activate
its Sentra Kredit Kecil program. BTPN is even more aggressive by cooperating with IFC, a
child company of the World Bank, to create a channel for micro credits. Attacks are also
coming from consumer financier companies, such as Adira Finance, FIF and Columbia, who
has recently noticed how sweet “the bottom of the pyramid” market is.

Adira Finance used ubiquitous network to enter the rural market and built office branches and
channels in the regency and sub district area. The same strategy is made by Pegadaian, which
invested massively in building small office branches, covering the countryside and reaching
remote areas.

How will BRI respond to these attacks from competitors? Luckily, BRI has many strong
points of differentiation in this segment. First is its unique strategy in approaching clients in
a cultural and communal way. BRI is known for its “Mantri,” account officers who uses a
cultural approach instead of the conventional selling approach.

These Mantris are required to live in the countryside where the clients are and mix and
mingle with them. Their principle reads, “Our clients are our neighbors.” This way, the
Mantris are aware of the traditional characteristic and social norms in the area. Holding on to
this knowledge, the Mantris uses the cultural approach with the clients.

Second is the extensive amount of channels that reaches remote areas. As of this moment,
BRI has around 5,500 services that cover regional offices, office branches, BRI Units, Teras
BRI, treasury office and “syariah” office branches.

Third is BRI’s information technology ability to place all of BRI’s service units available
online. With BRInet, around 4,954 work units are available online and in real time. BRI,
who has made these services available to remote areas, has made itself the superstar in
remittance services for Indonesian workers, who are employed abroad, to transfer money in
real time from overseas to the rural areas of Indonesia, where the workers came from.

Other than the three differentiations above, BRI is also campaigning for client acquisitions
and retentions with its Pesta Rakyat Simpedes (PRS) program. This event is a festive
gathering, with concerts and door prizes in the form of typical rural area presents, which is
not money, but goods instead.

Offensively Attacking Cities

How will BRI attack the cities and what ammunitions does it have? First, BRI has a savings
product called BritAma that acts as an anchor and also a gate, because as soon as clients
create a BritAma savings account, they will be exposed to BRI’s other products and
services. Second is BRI Prioritas (Priority) product that targets premium clients. Third are
BRI’s credit card products that attempt to serve the urban lifestyle.And last but not least,

BRI has a collection of consumer credit products and has been focusing in increasing its
office branch locations and widening its ATM network.

To stay focused, BRI is concentrating in only 14 cities in Indonesia, Medan, Palembang,

Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Denpasar, Makasar, Banjarmasin,
Balikpapan, Manado, Solo and Malang.

The problem still lays in the fact that, BRI did not have products that are equivalent to the
products from other banks. Because of this, BRI clients are using products from
competitors. “BRI’s challenge is now to create products that are of the same quality as the
products from competitors,” stated Mohammad Helmi, Head Division of BRI Credit Card.

Communitization and Confirmation Strategy

BRI has a strong customer base, which can be leveraged to access clients in the cities. M.
Sodo Harisetyanto, BRI’s Vice Section Head of Funding and Service, stated, “One of our
aimed potentials are the urban people that basically originated from the rural areas or at least
has relatives there. Of course it would be easier to have a BRI account in the city do
transactions to the rural area, which are mostly BRI clients.

By leveraging the clients in the rural area, BRI is expecting that the rural area clients will be
able to influence future urban clients. There is a great amount of people in large cities, such
as Jakarta, who originated from the countryside. The relationships and kinships between
these clients from the rural area and the cities is BRI’s “golden bridge” to enter the urban
segment.

BRI has homework to finish. First, BRI has to strategically direct its business model towards
transactional banking that relies on fee-based income, and not pure conventional banking that
relies on margins and interests.

The second homework is to create BRI’s image as a bank from the rural area with a positive
connotation. Using the image “the bank for rural people,” BRI tries to transform it into “the
bank for Indonesia people.” Indonesian people, of course, consist of both rural and urban
people. Soon, BRI will be presenting its communication campaign themed, “The bank for
our own country, serving all layers with the same quality.”

In the New Wave marketing concept, BRI’s effort to take a piece of the urban market by
taking advantage of the rural clients is a communitization strategy that has been executed
quite awhile ago. In fact, the rural customer base that BRI has will naturally form a
community with similar values and identity. The relationships in these communities are then
leveraged to widen the market to the urban segment.

Is this communitization strategy successful for BRI? This answer can be answered by how
far the urban community has confirmed the values and Indonesian identity that BRI carries. If
sincerity, to-the-point character, honesty and friendliness in an Indonesian style, are the
anxiety and desires of the urban community, it is possible that this is the path towards BRI’s
success in reaching urban clients.

1. Can strategy communization -confirmation to bring BRI becomes "Town bank"?

2. Where is the BRI business trying to get to in the long-term (direction)
3. Which markets BRI should a business compete in and what kind of activities are
involved in such markets? (markets; scope)
4. How can the BRI business perform better than the competition in those markets?
(advantage)?
5. What resources (skills, assets, finance, relationships, technical competence, facilities)
at BRI are required in order to be able to compete? (resources)?
6. What external, environmental factors affect the BRI businesses' ability to compete?
(environment)?
7. What are the values and expectations of those who have power in and around the
BRI business? (stakeholders)