Online business marketing for SMMEs in low-resource communities: A step by step process for setting up an online interactive environment. Paper presented at the 1st Namibia Customer Service Awards & Conference, 2014.

Abstract

The rise of entrepreneurship has led to the development of small businesses. These developments have also been witnessed in low resource areas. As a result, the continuous increase of small business creates stiff competition among businesses. Some entrepreneurs have opted to utilise ICTs to improve their businesses. The use of ICTs has enabled the application of e-business services such as e-commerce, e-marketing and online negotiation. In this paper we used the rural entrepreneurs as the case study. The main challenge that these entrepreneurs face is to reach the customers and sell widely. An online business platform is developed to satisfy the needs of the entrepreneurs. The proposed application offers the following functionalities: shop owners to upload products online, customers to get points for buying online and to negotiate by making offers online. The paper presents a step by step process of setting up an online platform. The paper educates the existing and emerging entrepreneurs on the online marketing technical process and functionalities.