May-June-issue

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
financial resources (Braojos-Gomez,
Benitez-Amado, & Llorens-Montes,
2015) and because marketing is relatively
expensive, digital marketing had become
very popular (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014).
Specifically on social media, (Ainin,
Parveen, Moghavvemi, Jaafar, & Mohd
Shuib, 2015) and his group discovered
that there were factors that influenced
the adoption of Facebook (the most
popular among social media) for SME
business in Malaysia. Similar interviews
with 453 SME managers tracked the
same Facebook phenomenon (Wamba
& Carter, 2016). One can easily find over
50 research articles on social media in
the last three years alone; some praising
the phenomenon, others criticizing its
overzealous usage.
In respect to the descriptive statistics
about the 1200 SMPs in East Africa;
Kenya had 65% of that number, Uganda
18% and Tanzania at 17%. The study
excluded Rwanda as the scope is linked
to another study on human capital
strategies where only countries with at
least 100 regulated accounting firms have
been scoped - so as to enable sampling
and further interviews at a later stage.
Rwanda has less than 50 firms. South
Sudan and Burundi had not yet become
members of the International Federation
of Accountants (IFAC).
Table 1 – Adoption of Websites, Facebook® and Twitter® per country
Country Website Facebook Twitter
Kenya 102 51 19
Tanzania 49 22 15
Uganda 37 37 10
188 110 44
%age 16% 9% 4%
Source: Researchers’ analytics and compilation
Table 2 – Assessment of firm presence levels per country
Country
No of firms Total firms %age
No presence Kenya 660
981
81%
Tanzania 161
Uganda 160
Only one of the three Kenya 74
135
12%
Tanzania 28
Uganda 33
Two of the three Kenya 25
45
4%
Tanzania 8
Uganda 12
All three Kenya 16
39
3%
Tanzania 14
Uganda 9
Source: Researchers’ analytics and compilation
The Skewness (Sk) and Kurtosis (Ku)
for adoption of Websites, Facebook and
Twitter were calculated using STATA15®
statistical software. The study noted that
the statistics were not normal as follows:
Websites: Sk = +1.9, Ku = 4.5 (normal
distribution has Sk = 0, Ku = 3)
Facebook: Sk = +2.8, Ku = 9.0
Twitter: Sk = +4.9, Ku = 25.3
The study revealed that 81% of the
SMPs (981 of them) did not have any
Website and were also not found on
Facebook® and Twitter®. Some firms had
only a Website while some were content
with Facebook account only; but no firm
was only on Twitter. As noted from above
skewness and kurtosis, most firms had
adopted Websites, followed by Facebook
while Twitter had the least appeal. The
right skewness is to be expected because
all observations would be either 0 or
positive. The kurtosis reveal that the data
is heavy-tailed compared to a normal
distribution because we have outlier data,
especially the very high number of firms
that do not have any of the three media.
There is need to enrich this area of research
specifically for East Africa because
Information Technology has come to
disrupt the way business is conducted and
consumers/customers are migrating to
the Internet. Therefore, an SMP firm that
does not appear on the Internet radar may
remain little known (lacking followers) or
may also learn little from others (those
that they follow). Further research will
be required to find out why this is the
case and also undertake content analysis
to understand the potential influence of
such presence on the competitiveness of
those SMPs.
References
Ainin, S., Parveen, F., Moghavvemi, S.,
Jaafar, N. I., & Mohd Shuib, N. L. (2015).
Factors influencing the use of social media
by SMEs and its performance outcomes.
Industrial Management & Data Systems,
115(3), 570–588. http://doi.org/10.1108/
IMDS-07-2014-0205
Braojos-Gomez, J., Benitez-Amado, J.,
& Llorens-Montes, F. J. (2015). How
do small firms learn to develop a social
media competence? International Journal
of Information Management, 35(4),
443–458. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ijinfomgt.2015.04.003
Tiago, M. T. P. M. B., & Veríssimo, J. M.
C. (2014). Digital marketing and social
media: Why bother? Business Horizons,
57(6), 703–708. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.
bushor.2014.07.002
Wamba, S. F., & Carter, L. (2016). Social
media tools adoption and use by SMES:
An empirical study. In Social Media and
Networking: Concepts, Methodologies,
Tools, and Applications (pp. 791–806).
IGI Global. http://doi.org/10.4018/978-
1-4666-8614-4.ch035
The writer is a Doctorate candidate at
University Institute of European and
International Studies (www.unies.de) and
ESAMI Business School (www.esamiafrica.org)
aro@jsamuelrichards.com
MAY - JUNE 2018 43