Diagnóstico de la descarga

The problem our group faced was finding a consistent market for the Mae Khong Khaa rice that would produce maximum income for the villagers. This section explains the attributes of the Mae Khong Khaa rice from the perspectives of the women’s cooperative and the Raks Thai Foundation’s distributor, Khun Chalerm. Using information gathered by both the women and Khun Chalerm, the project team analyzed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the Mae Khong Khaa rice in the market, displayed in Table 2. The results below explain how the project team came to these conclusions.

4.2.1 Marketing Attributes

The village women identified attributes of their rice that appeal to them, which were then used as marketing attributes for the rice. They told us that they prefer their mountain rice over paddy rice because of the mountain rice’s soft and sticky texture along with its sweet taste. In addition to their personal preferences, we asked them about the way the rice is grown and processed. They value the way that they hand-mill the rice in addition to the fact that the rice variety they produce can only be found in this village. These facts would encourage consumers to purchase authentic, hand-milled Mae Khong Khaa rice that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

The Raks Thai Foundation distributor, Khun Chalerm, provided us with information on attributes of the rice that current customers value. The physical attributes included the soft, slightly sticky texture, which makes it similar to Japanese rice, supporting our information gathered from the villagers. Another common reason that customers purchase Mae Khong Khaa rice is that they want to help the villagers by buying their rice.

4.2.2 SWOT Analysis

The information gathered from Khun Chalerm and the women’s cooperative in the Mae Khong Khaa village allowed us to develop a SWOT analysis of the attributes of the Mae Khong Khaa rice. This analysis, shown in Table 2, lists the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and

threats of the rice. As part of our SWOT analysis, we analyzed some of the products produced by the Royal Projects to compare with the Mae Khong Khaa rice.

Table 2: SWOT analysis of rice attributes

Strengths Weaknesses

 Hand-milled.

 Softer and stickier than normal brown rice.

 Grown by Karen people.

 Cannot be found anywhere but the Mae Khong Khaa village.

 More nutritious than white rice.  Production, processing, and sales do

not employ child labor.

 Non – genetically modified plant.

 Unappealing due to broken grains.  The packaging of the rice is plain.  The cost of the product is high in the

current market it is sold in.  The product has no certifications.

 The cost of production is high, limiting the amount of profit the villagers receive.  The rice has a short shelf-life.

Opportunities Threats

 Competitors do not present the story of the farmers who grow the rice.  The market of health conscious

people is growing.

 There is a possibility of new markets in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

 Rice yield in the village is low and limits the amount of rice that can enter into the market.

 New competitors with hand-milled rice products may arise in the future.

Table 2 shows that the villagers’ lack of marketing knowledge and experience contributes to the weaknesses of the rice as a product and constrains the villagers from making more income than they currently do. Villagers do not understand that broken grains in their rice is not something that consumers value. The consumers lack of knowledge of the special traits of the rice will tend to steer them away from the product. In some cases, Khun Chalerm notes that when he is able to explain to some of the customers why the rice grains are broken, they will often purchase the rice. In addition, Khun Chalern said that a main marketing attribute of the rice is the Karen women that grow it because oftentimes, customers purchase the rice in order to help the village.

4.2.3 Limitations

The limitations of these results match the limitations found in the previous section, 4.1, and must be kept in mind when analyzing the data. In addition, when gathering data on the

current customers for the Mae Khong Khaa rice, we were unable to survey the target population at the farmers’ market, as time constraints made it impossible for us to visit the market on the two days of the week that it was open. If we had been able to retrieve these data, we would have had a greater insight as to why the current customers continue to purchase the rice. Another main limitation is that we do not have specific nutritional information for the Mae Khong Khaa rice. The nutritional information we do have comes from general brown rice nutritional facts found in section 2.5 of our report.

4.2.4 Conclusion

The strengths for the Mae Khong Khaa rice mainly include its texture and taste in addition to the traditional way it is grown and processed. These attributes led the team to conclude that highlighting the rice’s texture in addition to the story of the villagers would be beneficial for marketing the rice because it will both make the product appealing and make the customer want to support the village by purchasing the rice.

4.3 There are several markets that would support the introduction of the Mae