Yamen Batch

DESIGNING RURAL CROPS MARKETING WEB APPLICATION: VISUALIZING THE MARKET INTERACTIVELY FOR THE CUSTOMER SIDE

YAMEN BATCH

UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA 2007

Designing Rural Crops Marketing Web Application: Visualizing the Market Interactively for the Customer Side

A thesis submitted to the Graduate School in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science (Information Technology) Universiti Utara Malaysia

By YAMEN BATCH (Matric No: 87076)

©YAMEN BATCH, 2007 All rights reserved

PERMISSION TO USE

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree from Universiti Utara Malaysia, I agree that the University Library may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purpose may be granted by my supervisor or, in his absence by the Dean of the Graduate School. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to Universiti Utara Malaysia for any scholarly use which may be made of any material from my thesis.

Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of materials in this thesis, in whole or in part, should be addressed to

Dean of Graduate School Universiti Utara Malaysia 06010 UUM Sintok Kedah Darul Aman.

v

ABSTRAK

Kawasan pedalaman haruslah mendapat kemudahan yang terbaik. Penyediaan kemudahan di kawasan pedalaman boleh dilakukan melalui penggunaan kemudahan IT dan teknologi. Sektor pertanian adalah sebagai salah satu sektor utama di kawasan pedalaman. Pengeluaran pemasaran pertanian di kawasan pedalaman masih dilaksanakan dengan menggunakan kaedah tradisional dan tidak mengamalkan penggunaan teknologi moden. Kajian ini, memperkenalkan kaedah terbaru dalam pengeluaran pemasaran pertanian berdasarkan kepada pemerhatian terhadap pemasaran hasil bumi di kawasan pedalaman.

Melalui

kaedah

ini,

ianya

dapat

membantu

dalam

mengembangkan pemasaran di kawasan pedalaman. Kajian ini adalah berdasarkan kajian terhadap kawasan pedalaman di Changlun, Malaysia . Masalah yang di hadapi di kawasan kajian adalah sebagai objek dalam penambahbaikan kaedah dalam pengeluaran hasil pertanian dan bertujuan untuk kajian dengan lebih lanjut.

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ABSTRACT

Rural areas need to have access to the most essential services, delivering those services to rural areas can be done through the use of IT services and technologies, picking the agricultural sector as one of the most important sectors in rural areas, marketing agricultural produce in rural areas is still achieved in traditional ways that do not employ the modern technology. This study introduces a brand new method for marketing agricultural produce online that depends on visualizing the rural crops market for customers; this will help to expand the rural market. This study presents a prototype application for the case of Changlun, Malaysia. The problems that the current prototype has might be the object of further improvements and research efforts.

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

By the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful

First, I would like to express my appreciation to Allah, the Most Merciful and, the Most Compassionate who has granted me the ability and willing to start and complete this study. I do pray to His Greatness to inspire and enable me to continue the work for the benefits of humanity.

After that, my most profound thankfulness goes to my supervisor Mr. Ahmad Hisham Zainal Abidin for his scientifically proven and creativity encouraging guidance and great support in this study.

Last, I wish to thank my Father, Mother who were always there for me by giving everything they have, my brothers and sisters for their endless love and support.

Thank you UUM.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

PERMISSION TO USE……………………………..……….…………………….…i ABSTRAK... …………….…………….…….………...……………...…...……...….ii ABSTRACT…………….…………….…….………...……………...…...……...….iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………..………….………..……….......………..…... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS……..……….……………….…………….....…..….…….v LIST OF TABLES ………………..…………..……………..…..……..…..…….. ..vii LIST OF FIGURES ……………….…………………………....…….….……….. viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ….…………………………....….…………………. ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background.................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Problem Statement ........................................................................................ 4 1.3 Research Objectives ...................................................................................... 5 1.4 Scope Of The Study ...................................................................................... 6 1.5 Significance Of The Study ............................................................................ 6 1.6 Organization Of The Report.......................................................................... 6 1.7 Summary…… ............................................................................................. 7 CHAPTER 2:LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Rural Development with ICT........................................................................ 8 2.2 Agricultural Products Marketing using ICT ............................................... 10 2.3 Web Application ......................................................................................... 13 ix

2.4 Web Marketing …....…............................................................................... 14 2.5 Visualizing the Market using ICT............................................................... 17 2.6 Summary……………………………………………………………..……18 CHAPTER 3:REASERCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 System Development Research Methodology ............................................ 19 3.2 Summary ..................................................................................................... 26 CHAPTER 4: FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4.1 System Design............................................................................................. 27 4.2 System Development .................................................................................. 32 4.3 Usabilty Testing .......................................................................................... 37 4.4 Summary ..................................................................................................... 43 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Finding.……………………………………………………………………44 5.2 Problems and Limitations ........................................................................... 45 5.3 Contribution of the Study.... ………………………………………………45 5.4 Future Work…………...….……………………………………………….46 5.5 Summary….…………...….……………………………………………….46

REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………48 APPENDIX A ...……………………………………………………………………53 APPENDIX B ……………………………………………………………...…56-59

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LIST OF TABLES

NO

TITLE

PAGE

3.1

GUI Requirements for the Web Application Prototype

25

4.1

Demographics Data Summary

38

4.2

Descriptive statistics for all dimensions

41

4.3

Summary of Statistics

41

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

NO

TITLE

PAGE

2.1

Telecenter Deployment Methodology

10

2.2

Architecture of Web application

14

2.3

Emerging Web Marketing Model

15

3.1

System Development Research Methodology

20

3.2

The Existing Framework

21

3.3

The conceptual Framework for the New System

22

3.4

System Architecture

23

4.1

UML Use Case Diagram

28

4.2

Sequence Diagram for the Admin Use Case(Product)

29

4.3

Sequence Diagram for the Admin Use Case(Farmer)

30

4.4

Sequence Diagram for the Customer Use Case

31

4.5

Entity Relationship Diagram

32

4.6

Prototyping System Development Methodology

32

4.7

Web based Prototype (Customer Module – the image map)

36

4.8

Web based Prototype (Customer Module – Product list)

36

4.9

Usability Testing Plan

37

4.10

Pie Chart (Gender)

39

4.11

Pie Chart (Occupation)

39

4.12

Pie Chart (Location)

40

4.13

Pie Chart (Usefulness)

42

4.14

Pie Chart (Clearness)

42

xii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

APMC

Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees

ASP

Active Server Pages

ERD

Entity Relationship Diagram

GUI

Graphical User Interface

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

ICT

Information and Communications Technology

IDE

Integrated Development Environment

JSP

Java Server Pages

UML

Unified Modelling Language

WWW

World Wide Web

xiii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter briefly explains the background of the study, in which the utilizing of web technology in visualizing the agricultural produce market for customers will be discussed. The problem statement, objectives, significance and scope of the study will also be introduced.

1.1 Background

Most communities in rural areas need to improve their state through having access to education, transportation, telecommunication and many other services. "Promoting a dynamic business environment in rural areas is the goal of rural development. Rural development is a mission by helping rural individuals, communities and businesses obtain the financial and technical assistance needed to address their various and unique needs." (USDA, n.d.). Delivering the essential services to rural areas can be done through the use of IT services and technologies. As Passoz (1993) stated, bringing high performance and friendly technology to rural and suburban areas is important strategy for their economic growth. In agreement with Amundsveen and Solvoll (2004), the agricultural produce sector has been one of the most important components of rural areas economy. But according to Mwabu and Thorbecke (2001), rural areas are still struck with challenges of low agricultural productivity, Ehui and Pender

48

References

Amundsveen, R. & G. Solvoll (2005). Small-scale farming in rural areas: logistical challenges with direct distribution. Research from Nordland Research Institute.

Andersen, K. V., Horton, M., Fogelgren-Pedersen, A., Gunawardena, C., and Hodson, P. 2004. B2B e-commerce: agricultural export from China. In Proceedings of the 6th international Conference on Electronic Commerce (Delft, The Netherlands, October 25 - 27, 2004). M. Janssen, H. G. Sol, and R. W. Wagenaar, Eds. ICEC '04, vol. 60. ACM, New York, NY, 534-540.

Arshad, F. M., & Shamsudin, M. N. (1997). RURAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL IN MALAYSIA. Retrieved Septemper 2 ,2007 from www.econ.upm.edu.my/~fatimah/rural.pdf

Clark, B. Welcome to My Parlor. . . Market. Manage.(Winter 1997), pp.11– 25.

Conallen, J. (2000). Building web applications with UML. The AddisonWesley Object Technology Series.

Cooper, Lee G. (1988), Competitive Maps: The Structure Underlying Asymmetric Cross Elasticities, Management Science, 34 (6), 707-23.

Dossani, R., R. Jhaveri, and D. C. Misra. (2005). Enabling ICT for Rural India. Research from Stanford University: 1- 75.

Ehui, S., & Pender, J. (2003). Resource Degradation, Low Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways out of the Spiral. Paper presented at the the 25th International Conference of Agricultural Economists, Durban, South Africa.

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Figueiredo, M., M. Camara, and R.Sabin. (2006). Impact of the Insertion of Modern Information and Communication Technologies in Brazilian Rural Communities. Information and Communication Technologies and Development, 2006. ICTD '06. International Conference on: 331-338.

Ganapathy, S., Ranganathan, C., & Sankaranarayanan, B. (2004 ). Visualization strategies and tools for enhancing customer relationship management. Communications of the ACM, 47 (11), 92 - 99.

Cheung, C. M. and Lee, M. K. 2005. Consumer satisfaction with internet shopping: a research framework and propositions for future research. In Proceedings of the 7th international Conference on Electronic Commerce (Xi'an, China, August 15 - 17, 2005). ICEC '05, vol. 113. ACM, New York, NY, 327-334.

Greenspan, J. & Bulger, B. (2001). MySQL/PHP database applications. USA: M&T.

Hall, C. R. (2002). Direct Marketing Guide for Producers of Fruits, Vegetables and other Specialty Products. Retrieved September 1, 2007, from www.utextension.utk.edu/publications/pbfiles/PB1711.pdf

Hassan, S., & Li, F. (2003). UTILISING IGV APPROACH TO IDENTIFY FACTORS AFFECTING WEB USABILITY, JICT Journal of ICT, Faculty of Information Technology ,Universiti Utara Malaysia 2(2), 2335.

Heeks, R. (1999). Information and communication technologies, poverty and development. Development Informatics Working Paper Series Working Paper No. 5 (ISBN: 1 9025 1826 8).

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Hoffman, D.L., Novak, T.P., & Chatterjee, P. (1995). Commercial scenarios for the Web: opportunities and challenges. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication, 1 (3), 15-25.

Kling, A. (1994). The economic consequences of the World Wide Web. Paper presented at the Second World Wide Web Conference: Mosaic and the Web, Geneva, Switzerland.

Klotz, J.-C. V. (2002). How to Direct-Market Farm Products on the Internet. Retrieved

August

23

,

2007,

from

www.ams.usda.gov/directmarketing/internetmarketingf.pdf

Kunz, W. (2007). Visualization of Competitive Market Structure by Means of Choice Data, Institute of Marketing, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, D-10099 Berlin.

Matocq, G., E. Tapella, C. Cattaneo. (2001). INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR SMALL HOLDER AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS: THE MERCOSUR ONION’S INFORMATION NET. System Sciences, 2001. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on CD-ROM.

Nijaz, B. (2000). Web-based information access for agile management. International Journal of Agile Management Systems, 2(2), 121 - 129.

Nunamaker, J. F., Chen, M., and Purdin, T. D. 1991. Systems development in information systems research. J. Manage. Inf. Syst. 7, 3 (Oct. 1991), 89-106.

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Muniafu, S. M., E. v. d. Kar, and J.V. Rensburg. (2005). An Environment for E-Commerce and ICT Enabled Logistics Services in Rural Areas of Transition Countries: The Case of South Africa. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Electronic commerce ICEC '05: 393-399.

Mwabu, G., & Thorbecke, E. (2001). Rural Development, Growth and Poverty in Africa Journal of African Economies, 13.

Pade, C. I., B. Mallinson, & D. Sewry. (2006). An exploration of the categories associated with ICT project sustainability in rural areas of developing countries: a case study of the Dwesa project. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series;Proceedings of the 2006 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing 204: 100 - 106. Palmer, J. W. and Griffith, D. A. 1998. An emerging model of Web site design for marketing. Commun. ACM 41, 3 (Mar. 1998), 44-51.

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APPENDIX A SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

xcviii

•

SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

Survey questionnaire for

Objective

The objective of this survey is to measure the Usefulness and the User Interface Clearness of the prototype

xcix

A. DEMOGRAPHY Please Kindly tick (√), the relevant response:

Your gender?

Male [ ]

Female [ ]

Your occupation?

Agriculture related Business [ ]

Others [ ]

Your Location?

Urban area [ ]

Suburban area [ ]

Rural area [ ]

c

ci

Please Kindly circle the best answer suited for you.

1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = Neutral

4 = Agree

5 = Strongly agree

B. USEFULNESS

1.

Using the prototype would enable me to

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

browse products more

quickly

2. Using the prototype would improve my buying method

3.

Using the prototype would motivate me to buy using it

4. Using the prototype would enhance the effectiveness of my buying transaction

cii

5. Using the prototype would make it

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

7. I could differentiate between titles

1

2

3

4

5

8.

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

easier to buy

6.

I see the prototype useful

for me

C. CLEARNESS (USER INTERFACE)

The prototype is compatible while browsing it

9.

The prototype has menu of key content in the main page

10. The prototype uses supportive photos

11. The prototype has features of users' feedback

ciii

12. The prototype a clear

1

2

3

4

5

structure

Thank you for your cooperation

APPENDIX B THE PROTOTYPE (THE CUSTOMER MODULE)

civ

cv

•

SELECT PRODUCT TYPE:

cvi

•

VIEW MAP FOR A CERTAIN PRODUCT:

cvii

cviii

•

VIEW PRODUCT LIST IN A CERTAIN AREA:

cix

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