Globalization has brought the increasing wide range of goods and services to become available on the world markets. As an effort to establish reliable systems of standards by which consumers can justify the quality of a given product or services, most national standards bodies around the world have agreed to establish the International standards known as ISO. Among the vast majority of ISO standards, ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 are widely known as the generic management system standards because the same standards can be applied to any organization, whether it is a business enterprise or a government organization. ISO 9000 is mainly concerned with the quality management, and the word "quality" refers to all of a product or a service, which are required by customers. ISO 14000 is a standard primarily concerned with the environmental management, which means what the organization does to eliminate harmful effects on the environment caused by its activities. The fact that both ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certificates are done voluntarily by companies, their adoption in many cases are required by exporters hoping to participate in the international trade under the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since ISO does not issue certificates of conformity to ISO 9000 or ISO 14000, respected and internationally recognized agencies provide those ISO certificates. In Indonesia, SBU PT. Sucofindo International Certification Services (SICS) is one of the certification bodies providing ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certificates. In providing its services, PT. SICS has to compete with other certification bodies, such as SGS, Lloyd's, KEMA, TUV, BVQI, and many others certification bodies having foreign affiliations.
This thesis is aimed to analyze the competitive and marketing strategy of SBU PT. SICS in providing ISO certificates, especially with the existing foreign affiliated certification bodies. The research is conducted by using descriptive approach to identify both internal and external environment of a company that may have impact in this industry. The data for this research is collected from the literature study, filed study and the questionnaires distributed to 20 respondents having relevant knowledge and experience in this field (purposive sampling). Ten respondents are given questionnaires containing 10 key internal factors for business strengths rated from I (very weak) to 5 (very strong) and together with the scores (1-100). Similarly to another ten respondents, they are given questionnaires containing 10 key external factors for market attractiveness rated from 1 (very unattractive) to 5 (very attractive) together with the scores (1-100).
The data analysis on the business strength of PT. SICS and its market attractiveness has resulted in the averaged weighted score of 2.97 (Internal Factors for Business Strength) and the averaged weighted score of 2.98 (External Factors for Market Attractiveness). By plotting the averaged weighted score of business strength (2.97) and the averaged weighted score of market attractiveness (2.98) in the General Electric Matrix Business Screen, it occupies Cell V, indicating that the company's business strength is at the average level and the market for ISO certificates is quite attractive. As suggested by David (2001 : 216), this position requires hold and maintain strategies to be considered implemented by PT. SICS in order to win the market share. These hold and maintain strategies are then suitably employed with market penetration and product (or in this case service) development strategies.