The roles of field assistant of pesticide company in Indonesia: a qualitative study

Abstract

The pesticide market in Indonesia is highly competitive which leads the companies to constantly develop marketing strategies. Pesticide companies assign Field Assistants (FAs) to execute the promotional efforts and knowledge delivery to farmers to increase the sale. This study aimed to investigate FA roles as a promotional agent in technology dissemination to support their tasks in demand creation and technology adoption, respectively. The study was conducted from October to December 2020 in North Sumatra Province. Data was collected by interviewing individual FA representing five pesticide companies, both multinational and local companies. The descriptive qualitative method was used by employing an inductive theoretical model, then analyzed with coding techniques using NVivo. The result revealed that among 10 emerging roles from coding, the most dominant role was stakeholders’ engagement; whilst the least one was understanding farmers’ problems. The role also addressed an environmental issue through a stewardship program funded by the company. There were variations in the implementation of those roles among companies due to their limiting factors. Thus, FA roles are mainly working on promotional efforts embedded with extension activities in terms of knowledge transfer to farmers, technical advisory, on-farm demonstration plot, and expose or farmer field day.