Abstract:
The government's current important policy is emphasizing on grass root economy development for solving poverty problems. OTOP project has been launched, taking outstanding products or identities of communities to produce goods or services in the form of business. The purpose of this research was to investigate and compare strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of OTOP production business taking into account product groups, namely, food, beverage, clothes/garments, ware/souvenirs and herb supplements 400 OTOP producers whose products were chosen to be Thai OTOP Product Champion 2004. Questionnaire -guided interview based n Osgood' method was used to collect the data.
It was found the strengths of OTOP business, the study indicated that they included the experienced leaders with responsibility and readiness to lead, highly skilled labor, and the good o-operation within the group, while their weaknesses found were an ineffective sale channels via e-commerce, lack of public relations, inability to find sale agents and channels, and lack of financial plans.
With respect to opportunities, the study revealed that they included having convenient and fast communication system; having plenty of raw standard materials resulting in production of good quality products; expansion of markets, customers more concern with their health boosting e sale total. However, the threats of the business were also found. They included the high price of petrol, the appreciation of Thai baht causing a hardship in exporting, people's higher costs of living reducing their buying ability, no financial supports from financial institutions as used to obtain before, and inability to gain investment through the stock Exchange Market as this business was too small
The comparison of strengths and weaknesses of OTOP business taking into account products groups revealed that 20 items were different at a statistical significant level of .05. For the opportunities and threats, 16 items were found different.