Cigarettes or smokes bring dilemma to Indonesian society. On one hand, cigarettes cause several diseases, leading to death, and thus are considered dangerous; on the other hand, cigarettes generate revenue for Indonesia, for both the state and the people. This raises several pros and cons in all elements of society. It is noted the increase in ciggarette consumption reaches 5% annually, followed with the fact that now more people are consuming it at a younger age.
Number of smokers aged 10-14 has doubled within 10 years, from 9.5% in 2015 to 17.5% in 2010. The phenomenon encourages three Faculty of Economics students, namely Dian Friantoro (Accounting), Nurul Hikmah (Accounting Education), dan Eryan Dwi Susanti (Economics Education) to write a scicentific paper entitled “Gerakan Rokok Tepat Sasaran (GO-PASAR) Melalui Modifikasi Strategi 4P Kotler's Marketing Mix Menuju Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) di Indonesia” (Righ-on-target Smokes through Modification Strategy of 4P Kotler's Marketing Mix to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Indonesia).
After going through final stage of scientific paper competion in The 3rd Public Health Competition with the theme of “A Black-and-white Issue on Tobacco in Indonesia” organized by Faculty of Public Health, Jember State University on 19-22 November, 2015. Those three YSU students from Faculty of Economics were announced the winner after defeating the other teams.
GO-PASAR suggests a modification strategy on marketting mix, including price, product, place, and promotion. The aim of this move is to prevent smoke consumption among kids, teenagers, and poor households; to decrease the age of smoking; to decrease number of national smoking, and; to lower number of death cases due to smoking.
Dian reveales, in the beginning her team was troubled. “We missed the train, we were fooled by a bus ticket scalper, and so on, yet we still attempted to present the best”, she explained. As a commitee member of Student Activity Unit of Research “Kristal” (Komunitas Riset dan Penalaran, Research and Logical Thinking Community) in Faculty of Economics YSU, she hopes children and juvenilles no longer become the target market of cigarette industry. “We need to cut off the smoking chain among the youth as the effort to realize healthy Indonesia on the move to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” she added.
Economy and Health become the two highlighted aspects in discussing smoke; these two aspects must be met. Lastly, Dian expressed her appreciation over supports from varying parties, “We thank all the friends for all the help and prayer. We also want to say gratitude to Ms. Adeng Pustikaningsih for supervising in the writing of this scientific paper. Our special gratitude goes to our parents for all the prayer.” (fadhli)
