19th annual research workshop mobile phones and micro and small enterprises (mse) performance and transformation in dodoma, tanzania by Dr. V. Venkatakrishnan

Ranking of mobile phone services usage for business purposes

With regard to the usage of various mobile phone services, voice calls seem to be most important service used by the MSEs of this study. An overwhelming 71% of the respondents indicated that voice calls are the most important mobile based services used for business purposes. This was followed by mobile money services as about 25% of the respondents ranked it as the most important mobile phone based service. SMS also seems to be widely used by the respondents as it was ranked as the second ranked service by about 45% respondents and 49% ranked as the third most important service. Considering the micro nature of most of the enterprises surveyed, it is not surprising to note that accessing internet, emails, social networks and other mobile based services were not under use. The Table 4 provides these details.

Table 6: Ranking of mobile phone based services used by the MSEs

Rank	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Not applicable	Missing
Voice calls	53 (70.7)	20 (26.7)	-	-	-	-	-	-	1 (1.3)
SMS	1 (1.3)	34 (45.3)	37 (49.3)	1 (1.3)	-	-	-	-	2 (2.7)
Mobile money	19 (25.3)	22 (29.3)	32 (42.7)	1 (1.3)	-	-	-	-	1 (1.3)
Internet	-	-	3 (4)	10 (13.3)	3 (4)	-	1 (1.3)	56 (74.7)	2 (2.7)
Emails	-	-	-	1 (1.3)	6 (8)	9 (12)	-	57 (76)	2 (2.7)
Social networks	-	-	-	2 (2.7)			-	57 (76)	2 (2.7)
Others	-	1 (1.3)	-	-	-	-	1 (1.3)	71 (94.7)	2 (2.7)

Source: Field Survey (2014)
Uses of mobile phones for market development for these MSEs were also discussed. It was found out that all the surveyed enterprises were using it for obtaining information about the new products. Contacting the potential customers (97.3%), finding out new markets and higher access to market information (96% each) and expanding to new markets (85.3%) were also cited as the uses of mobile phones for these MSEs for market development.

Mobile service providers subscribed

Vodacom seems to be leading service provider as 81.3% MSE customers ranked it as number one service provider. Tigo is ranked second important service provider by again 81.3% MSE customers. About 88% of them ranked Airtel as the third most important service provider to them.

Table 7: Leading mobile phone service providers to the MSEs

Mobile service providers	Rank
	1	2	3	4
Vodacom	61 (81.3%)	9 (12%)	4 (5.3%)	1 (1.3%)
Tigo	10 (13.3)	61 (81.3%)	3 (4%)	1 (1.3%)
Airtel	3 (4.0%)	4 (5.3%)	66 (88%)	2 (2.6)
Zantel	0	0	1 (1.3%)	10 (13.3%)

Source: Field Survey (2014)