Scaling up use of Mobile Marketing by Small and Medium Size Enterprises Case Study of Nairobi County

Abstract

In this era of globalization, the demands and growth of technology has led to an increase in the usage of information technology especially for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Among these technologies is mobile marketing which has become an essential factor for SMEs to compete with industry demands. With the increased mobile services subscriptions by consumers, SMEs are exposed to vast markets to tap into. It is against this background that this research sought to identify the extent of mobile marketing by SMEs in Nairobi County, the factors affecting the scaling up of mobile marketing by SMEs, how SMEs can leverage on the mobile marketing technologies to enhance their competitiveness in this competitive globalized business environment and in turn adopt a model that can be used by SMEs to scale up mobile marketing. A case study of SMEs within Nairobi County was used for the purpose of the research. The data was collected form Small and Medium Size Enterprises within Nairobi County. The target respondents were SME owners and managers. Data collection was done mainly through online questionnaires and was analyzed through Partial List Squares Structured Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) which included measures of path model analysis, coefficient of determination and significance of path coefficients to find out the significance of latent variables affecting the scaling up of mobile marketing by SMEs. Results from the study showed high internal consistency, discriminant and construct validity of the data collection tools. The study established that TOE framework was the most viable framework for SMEs to use in the scaling up mobile marketing. The latent variables, relative advantage of mobile marketing was highly significant towards the scaling up of mobile marketing with a significance level of 3.205, organizational technical resources was highly significant with a significance level of 2.007 and the perceived reception of users towards mobile marketing was identified as highly significant towards the scaling of mobile marketing with a significance level of 2.762. On the other hand the research established that the latent variable compatibility had a relatively low significance level of 0.0708 towards scaling up of mobile marketing and size of organization had a relatively low significance level of 0.68. The scaling up of mobile marketing is influenced by technological, organizational and environmental factors. This study contributes to body of knowledge by providing a model that can be used by SMEs to scale up mobile marketing in their firms. Key words: Mobile Marketing, SME, IT Adoption and TOE.