O

n a recent trip to Central and East Java, I started to question the concept of marketing about which I thought I knew a lot.

In Bantul, Yogyakarta, my family was on a quest for a bakmi Jawa noodle restaurant described on the Internet as a '€œmust'€ for food lovers. Since satisfied customers had written about it, it must be a good example of a product that has the right marketing mix: A product that is needed or wanted, a price that is right for the product and services offered, conveniently located and its target market has sufficient information about its existence.

But just looking for the place starting from the city of Yogyakarta posed a lot of problems. Some people along the road whom we asked had never heard of this noodle place. It was only when we reached the borders of the city, entering Bantul, that someone gave us an accurate description of how to reach the place, including the distance.

We were told that we would know the restaurant because there would be a lot of cars parked outside. Later on we found out that since the noodle house was located in the inner part of a village, these cars wouldn'€™t be visible. We passed by rice fields and every time we took a turn, the road would get narrower.

Until we entered a village and every time we asked someone along the road, they would point us in the direction until finally we found the place, already full of people and cars parked mostly with Jakarta plate numbers.

No one greeted us as we excitedly entered the restaurant with many tables and benches made of bamboo. We were asked to write down our orders on a piece of paper. Then we looked around for an empty table and we couldn'€™t find any. So we stood around for a while and waited for other people to finish eating. Then when we finally found a table, we waited, and we waited, and we waited.

More people came in and we offered to share our table with a family of five. We started a conversation with them and found out that like us, their son was also studying in Yogyakarta and every time they came to visit, they would come to this noodle house.

They told us that we had to wait for at least an hour for our orders and that the employees of the noodle house were never mistaken in their '€œfirst come, first served'€ policy. Our noodles were cooked using charcoal and there were only two stoves with one cook each doing everything from the preparation of the ingredients until the food was cooked.

Finally, our noodles came after an hour as predicted. Being a typical Javanese family, we ate in silence. We were not disappointed. It was delicious. When it was time to pay, the price was typically Yogyakartan. We were not disappointed again.

So lessons learned. If we examined the 4Ps (price, product, promotion, place) of this noodle house, based on my perception, it would fail in the last two Ps.

Then, why is this noodle house successful? The success of its business lies in the right target market they cater to. For loyal and first-time customers, it has all the right marketing mix. The more out of the way the location is, the more appealing it becomes.

The information obtained through the Internet would be enough for this wanderlust because they don'€™t expect to find unlikely places in the traditional media. This could be the reason why travel books in the genre of '€œLonely Planet'€ are becoming more popular.

Those who are willing to go out of their way just to eat a plate of noodles that can actually be obtained in a more convenient location are those who are on vacation. These are also the ones who have an hour to spare just to wait for their food. When they go back to work they are the ones who will recall the story of their bakmi Jawa adventure.

The key then is finding the right target market for our product or service. The CEO of Equil told our students during a seminar many years ago that Equil'€™s target market was not the rich but those who advocated a healthy lifestyle.

Not many rich people, who can afford Equil many times over, will use the product. But even those consumers with a modest montly income will bcome a regular buyer of Equil if the person believes that health is wealth.

We were also fortunate to have a chance to compare the taste of bebek Madura in the island of Madura. We crossed the famous Suramadu Bridge with its brightly colored lights and when we enquired where we could locate the famous duck restaurant we were disappointed to hear that it was already closed for the evening.

We decided to eat then in a fried-duck restaurant pointed out to us by a helpful local. The food was really good with the accompanying right combination of customer service we would expect from a regular restaurant in Jakarta, i.e., attentive waiters and clean surroundings.

If the food in this not-at-all well known restaurant was superb, what was there more about that famous restaurant talked/written about on the Internet.

So with anticipation, we found our way early the next morning to the more famous fried-duck restaurant. The place was already teeming with people although it was not yet full because the place was so big that it would take hundreds of people to fill the place up.

We had to rush because we heard that if we were not early enough, there would be a long queue. As we were eating our fried duck, which was not as good as that which we had eaten the night before, bus loads of people kept pouring in.

It looks as though the taste of the fried duck itself is not the attraction but that the restaurant itself is a tourist attraction. A person has not visited Madura yet if she has not visited this restaurant.

And we can just imagine the vast number of Indonesians who have not yet been to Madura not to mention foreign tourists.

The '€œbandwagon effect'€ is clearly in effect here.

The customers are the best judge and the number of loyal customers signals whether a company has the right marketing mix.

In the end, products and services are bought because of their rational and emotional appeal but more so because of their emotional appeal as demonstrated in the two businesses cited above. If the company has the customer'€™s heart, it can have her/his pocket too.

The writer is the Director of GS FAME Institute of Business/Institut Bisnis Nusantara International Programs, Jakarta.