Mapping and development strategy of Pempek — a specialty traditional food of south Sumatra Indonesia

Abstract

Pempek, a specialty traditional food of South Sumatra, has not been developed toward industrialization. A development process should not negate the preference taste of the consumer who is used to the taste of the traditional food. The innovation in the development of pempek to overcome its limitation for improving the marketing access as well as leading toward its industrilization was needed. A SWOT and AHP analysis were used to select the criteria and priority of consumer toward pempek development followed by the PCA to cluster the criteria and the preference of consumer. The analysis of the samples shows that pempek development requires a change in packaging design that meets the aspects of convinient and the right size by doing the engineering process to suppress the influence of inconsistent fish raw material quality. The analysis also shows that the pempek samples collected from the city of Palembang could be classified into 4 classes. The first one was the pempek which have a higher value and similarities in elasticity, chewiness, and hardness. The second one was the pempek which have a higher value and similarities in stickiness, aroma, taste, and brittleness. The third one was the pempek which have a lower value and similarities in the value of smoothness, colour, and juiciness. And the fourth one was the pempek which are not related in any of the quality attribute of pempek. The main characteristic of Pempek which could be used as the control variable on the development and processing of Pempek were taste, brittleness, stickiness, and aroma. The variables which needed an attention due to negative contribution to the development of pempek were hardness, ease of chew, elasticity, smoothness, juiciness, and color. The development of pempek should suppresed the variable aroma especially fish aroma and while the taste and brittleness should be improved.