Abstract:
Eastern Thailand is the location where fruit agriculture plays the most important part
in the economy of the region. Several fruit markets located in each of the Eastern
provinces become the countrys major markets. However, fruit price determination in
each market may vary and is based on different fruit classification and pricing
conditions. This consequently causes ambiguity in classifying fruit among cultivators.
Moreover, the system of fruit reference price, which will help in tracking pricing
information in each market, has not been developed yet. As a result, this research
study aims at investigating marketing information and factors that are used to create
the price determination of seven economic fruits, namely durian, mangosteen,
longan, rambutan, longkong, sala, and banana, in Rayong, Chanthaburi and Trat
provinces. It also aims at developing a marketing information system that integrates
the fruit price in the area of the three Eastern provinces. The research is divided into
two main parts. The first is the qualitative study that aims at investigating marketing
information and factors used to create the price determination of the economic
fruits. Fourteen cultivators and vendor representatives from the three Eastern
provinces were interviewed about how they classify the fruit price. It is found that
each market uses different methods for fruit price determination. For instance, each
vendor uses different criterion to classify mangosteens, ranging from its size, calyx
perfection, to skin. However, they share similar methods in classifying the fruit
appearance and perfection, for example, mangosteens can be classified into five
categories: large shiny skin, small shiny skin, rough skin, tiny, and off-size. The
findings then allowed the researchers to categorize the main factors for the
information system development. The second part of the research is the quantitative
study that concentrates on developing a management information system that
integrates the economic fruit price in the area of the three Eastern provinces. In so
doing, the database management was developed using MySQL program and the
language used was PHP. Then, a website was analyzed, designed and created to
present and record the fruit price information. The website was divided into 2 parts.
The back-end system management involves the information system managed and
recorded by the website administrator while the front-end system management
expresses economic fruit price information and allows market agents to record the
fruit prices themselves. The evaluation of the system was also conducted using
questionnaires in order to find out the users satisfaction from 86 cultivators,
vendors, market agents and other regular users. The results revealed that the overall
users satisfaction was in the good level. The regular users had the highest level of
satisfaction. For further development of the system, cooperation from market agents
is needed to keep the fruit price information more up to date and continual
throughout the season so that it can be used effectively