Expanding The Capabilities Of Social Network Applications To Supporte-Commerce Activities

ABSTRACT

This study aimed at expanding e-commerce activities (application) on Social Network Application (SNA) by entrepreneurs beyond products/services advertisement in Tanzania. Surveys show that there is a large number of entrepreneurs and customers who are not using e-commerce for business and shopping activities in Wazo Ward. Instead, the majority use SNA. Therefore, this study used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to determine users’ perception on the use of SNA.

The study was based on qualitative and quantitative research approaches to guarantee dependability of the findings. For the purpose of this study, the sample size was 105 participants, whereby 60 participants were customers involved in shopping online from Wazo Ward, 40 were entrepreneurs who are conducting business activities online and 5 were the key informants. The study used interviews to collect data from the key informants and field surveys to gather facts from entrepreneurs and customers to obtain the information. Data was analyzed quantitatively with the help of the computer program. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel were used to process and present data in the form of graphs and tables.

The results indicate that there are four factors that hinder e-commerce in Wazo Ward namely; lack of awareness, lack of training, lack of capital and security. Moreover, the researcher found that, only 10 (25%) of entrepreneurs have e-commerce websites, whereas 30 entrepreneurs (75%) did not own e-commerce websites. Thus, to compensate the lack of e-commerce knowledge (85%) of entrepreneurs and customers prefer to use SNA for business and shopping activities to address the above factors. As a consequence, it was decided to build and test a Social Network Application to determine if it could improve the use of e-commerce.