| dc.description |
The technological advancement in Intelligent
Transport Systems and mobile phones enable massive
collaborating devices to collect, process, and share information to
support the sales and transportation of agricultural goods (agrogoods)
from farmer to market within the Agriculture Supply
Chain. Mobile devices, especially smartphones and intelligent
Point of Sale (PoS), provide multiple features such as Global
Positioning System (GPS) and accelerometer to complement
infrastructure requirements. Despite the opportunity, the
development and deployment of the innovative platforms
integrating Agro-goods transport services with e-commerce and
e-payment systems are still challenging in developing countries.
Some noted challenges include the high cost of infrastructure,
implementation complexities, technology, and policy issues.
Therefore, this paper proposes a framework for integrating ITS
services in agro-goods e-commerce, taking advantage of mobile
device functionalities and their massive usage in developing
countries. The framework components identified and discussed
are Stakeholders and roles, User Services, Mobile Operations,
Computing environment with Machine Learning support,
Service goals and Information view, and Enabling Factors. A
Design Science Research (DSR) method is applied to produce a
framework as an artifact using a six-step model. Also, a case
study of potato sales and transportation from the Njombe region
to Dar es Salaam city in Tanzania is presented. The framework
constructs the ability to improve information quality shared
among stakeholders; provide a cost-effective and efficient
approach for buying, selling, payment, and transportation of
Agriculture goods. |
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