Business Initiation and Performance Strategies Leading to the Sustainability of Thai Traditional Medicine Small Businesses in Bangkok Metropolis
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Abstract
This research aimed to examine the factors that determine small business initiation, obstacles, and operational strategies on small business sustainability of Thai traditional medicine in Bangkok Metropolis. The research based on qualitative method, in-depth interview of 17 business owners, 19 employees, 17 clients and 17 business places.
The result revealed that Thai traditional medicine knowledge embedded in Thai culture, low investment, provided prime opportunity for their investment as small firms, along with low investment, unrestricted educational levels, and easiness to acquire knowledge are supporting factors for initiating business. The owners and employees were proud of Thai cultural heritages. But their obstacles were inadequacy of skilled employees, lack of managerial skills and support from the government. The owners used mixed marketing, service innovation and social media as their performance strategies. Being allies with tourism industry became their additional source of revenue. Employees’ pride of being helping hands led to their genuine services resulting in clients’ satisfaction. Further, the owners perceived that profit was subservient to helping their clients. The result shows that the firms will be sustainable due to the increasing need of people to alleviate their health difficulties, and the wide-spread of the firms makes prospected clients easy to access the services.
Article Details
Academic articles, research articles, and book reviews in the Ph.D. in Social Sciences Journal are author’s opinions, and not the publisher’s, and is not the responsibility of the Ph.D. in Social Sciences Journal Philosophy Association, Ramkhamhaeng University. (In the case that research is done on human, the researcher has to be trained in Ethics for Doing Research on Human Training and has to produce the evidence of the training).
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