Description:
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.