Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Due to increasing fuel subsidy in state budget, government decided to replace all households’ kerosene consumption to LPG, as the cheaper one. Launched on May 2007, the program was targeted to replace kerosene consumption on 52 million households until 2010. This program is one of the biggest government projects in this country. But in its implementing, many consumers were rejected using LPG. Most of them considered that LPG as unsafe, difficult to use, more expensive, etc. Even though there are many consumers already start to use LPG nowadays, the same resistance may happen in future when conversion program entering new area. This resistance should be anticipated by Pertamina so the conversion can be penetrated faster than before. This research is focused on two main problems of conversion program; they are resistance and learning process. Resistance elaboration identifies consumer's reasons rejecting LPG. These reasons may become input for Pertamina anticipating the same rejecting in future implementation. The second focus is learning process that provides information about consumer's changes from using kerosene to LPG. This description gives Pertamina input about popular consumers' scheme in replacing their kerosene to LPG. In doing the research, questioners were distributed to gather data. Researcher also observed and interviewed some respondents and Pertamina official. Rogers's theory about diffusion of innovation becomes foundation analyzing data and problems. His five attributes which are complexity, relative advantages, trialability, observability, and compatibility become tools to map problems. Analyzing also use cross tabulation in order to get the most popular scheme in consumers' learning process about using LPG. The result is that demonstration held in initial LPG packet distribution is not effective although important. Informal information sources such as neighbors and family play more significant role encouraging consumers to start using LPG. Due to the result, researcher recommends Pertamina to reorganize demonstration and focus on training potential local LPG seller to be advisor or counselor for the society. Demonstration can be held by trained LPG sellers regularly so consumers can learn using LPG continuously in certain period.