CONSUMER PREFERENCES STUDY IN VISITING CAFÉ OR RESTAURANT IN BANDUNG DURING COVID 19 PANDEMIC AND SUITABLE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT EXPLORATION

The existence of COVID 19 has brought a very negative impact to the world economy, including Indonesia. Starting in early March, the Indonesian government issued a PSBB (Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar) regulation as an effort to combat the spread of this virus. The impact of this regulation makes people do all their activities from home. As a result, many cafés/restaurants cannot operate normally. According to reports, at least 6,800 restaurant owners have had to close their businesses during this pandemic. But over time, after going through months of isolation, people started to return to their normal activities. The need to socialize directly, makes people dare to jump back into the outside world. For this condition, the government is no longer applying the PSSB regulation, instead they applied the AKB (Adaptasi Kebiasaan Baru) or what usually called “the new normal” regulation. The AKB regulation allows people to have their activities as usual, but with precautions needed.This condition, of course, brings a breath of fresh air for cafe/restaurant owners. The trust of consumers in café/restaurant became important. Café/restaurant that has strong branding usually are the ones that get picked during this pandemic. The society demand of feeling safe and secure has made café/restaurant must provide that security.This research used several analysis to understand what consumer wants and needs in the selection of visiting a café/restaurant. This research aims to understand the consumers preferences in visiting a café/restaurant during COVID 19 pandemic by using mixed methodology, both qualitative and quantitative research methodology. The qualitative research done by conducting a focus group discussion with the selected target market. The insight found from FGD, then used to build a fundamental formula to then translated into questions for the questionnaire, which is part of the quantitative research. The questionnaire was spread via online, and get approximately 200 response, as the minimum number needed for problem solving research. The data then processed using SPSS software to analyze the factor. There are three main factors that are found from this research: consumer behavior, costumer motivation, and social media role. From these factors then extracted to several variable in which those became the key to understand the consumer preferences.The proposed business solutions are reminding the consumer of what they want and need by putting the right content on social media platform. According to the respondent, aside from Google, Instagram is their most preferable social media to look for information, and in this case means, that café/restaurant must have a proper and right content to attract consumer. According to the respondent they prefer café/restaurant that gives them thorough information from its operational hours until their healthy protocols. Which can be concluded that social media is certainly the key to attract the consumers. The implementation plan and the sample of Instagram content is also has been given in this research as the example of what a café/restaurant must do to become the ones that get visited during COVID 19 pandemic.Keywords: Consumers Preferences, Consumer Behaviour, Costumer Motivation, Social Media Rol