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Mobile marketing application for entrepreneurship development: Codesign with women entrepreneurs in Iringa, Tanzania
Author(s) -
Kapinga Alsen Florian,
Suero Montero Calkin,
Mbise Esther Rosinner
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the electronic journal of information systems in developing countries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.41
H-Index - 18
ISSN - 1681-4835
DOI - 10.1002/isd2.12073
Subject(s) - entrepreneurship , mobile phone , marketing , business , tanzania , artifact (error) , design science research , gadget , livelihood , business model , knowledge management , computer science , information system , telecommunications , engineering , economics , agriculture , finance , algorithm , socioeconomics , electrical engineering , computer vision , ecology , biology
Mobile marketing apps have been progressively employed as business gadget innovations in developing economies. Research has acknowledged a number of encounters between women entrepreneurs and innovation opportunities. One identified opportunity is the application of technology to enable women entrepreneurs' access to market information with ease. This paper reports the cocreation process of a mobile application contextualized to Tanzanian women entrepreneurs to facilitate access to market information for improving their business performance and livelihood. Our study employs design science research (DSR) strategy for the cocreation and codesign of the mobile application artifact. After evaluating in the wild the mobile application, the women entrepreneurs participating in the study reported that through the codesigned mobile phone app access to market information is facilitated, and their business and the networks could be expanded. The contribution of our paper highlights the benefits of employing codesign and cocreation in combination with DSR to achieve a meaningful and contextualized virtual platform for accessing market information and for business networks expansion through direct contact with target consumers.