A Dissertation Submitted in Partial/Fulfilment of the Requirement for awards
of the Degree of Master of Business Administration -Corporate Management of
University
In Tanzania, farmers play a vital role in poverty alleviation and are an important part in the economy for growth in developing counties particularly in Tanzania. Due to larger number of poor people enhanced to engage in it, the sector employs and contribute 80% of the GDP in Tanzania. For many years, farmers have faced challenges in marketing to sell their products. Often they have to sell their product at very low prices because they have little or no discretion as to whom they sell to or at what cost.
This study has been guided by three specific objectives including the inspiration performance anticipation to farmer’s behavior who intended to receive and use mobile phone for cassava marketing, the inspiration facilitating conditions of farmer’s behavior, and the effect of the Social influence to farmer’s behavior motives to receive and practice the use of mobile phone for cassava marketing. This study was conducted in Coast region at Mkuranga District, involved 102 farmers’ household.
A questionnaire was developed and then distributed to users of mobile phones especially farmers in Tanzania. Both primary and secondary sources were adopted to collect data from the field. A SPSS program was used to analyze all data gathered from respondents in form of table to present frequency and percentage, Pearson correlation and regression analysis of coefficient results.
Through improving communication between farmers and customers, the great acceptance of mobile phone can be used as great facilitators for farmers in marketing. The research used Unified Technology Theory of Use and Acceptance (UTUAT) to analyze the acceptance behavior and use of mobile phone platforms for advertising in Tanzania.
The results were indicated significantly and positively relationship between effort expectation and farmer’s acceptance and use the mobile phone for marketing, and there was a negative relationship between Performance expectation and farmer’s behaviour intent to accept and use mobile phone for agricultural marketing (t =0.137, p = 0.891, β = 0.012) as its p-value was greater than 0.05 which is 0.891. The recommendation of the study encouraged mobile phone companies to provide reliable services to attract rural communities to use their services. Local government and other organizations have a role to play by encouraging farmers to use mobile phone services for marketing.