Sunday Adewale Olaleye

Insights into online reviews of hotel service attributes: A cross-national study of selected countries in Africa

Online travel reviews are paramount to trip planning because they help consumers’ form images of destinations. Despite ample studies on hotel service attributes, knowledge is scarce regarding culturally nuanced attributes, including security perceptions. This study examines consumers’ perceptions of service attributes and security/safety concerns of hotels in Africa. Data were extracted from three hotel categories (3, 4, and 5-stars), which were based on TripAdvisor rankings from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. A hybrid analysis revealed that hotel service attributes and security/safety are cardinal evaluation criteria for visitors to Africa. Additionally, our study reveals that most negative reviews were from 5-star hotels and Egypt received more positive reviews in all the service attributes than other countries.

The Appraisal of Facebook Online Community: An Exposition of Mobile Commerce in Social Media Reviews

Social Commerce is a growing upshot of electronic commerce in Nigeria. It is influencing the existing value networks and turning around the global economy. Many authors have impacted the body of knowledge in the context of mobile commerce and social media as a separate research domain, but the fusion of mobile commerce and social media still need more scholars’ attention most especially in the developing nations. This study applies the hybrid technique to sort out social commerce customers’ reviews, appraise the quality of the extracted data and identify the opinion that transpired between online retailing merchants and online customers. The appraisal theory used for the pairing of mobile commerce and social media explain how attitude and graduation connect engagement in mobile commerce products and services review. The equilibrium of mobile commerce and Facebook stands to improve customer service. This study offers some managerial implications to the social commerce and electronic marketing practitioners.

Users experience of mobile money in Nigeria

Mobile money is an upshot of the conventional banking system that creates an opportunity for the financially excluded group of people. It allows the unbanked in the rural areas and the underbanked in the urban centers to have access to financial services. User experience is all encompassing as it affects the emotion and the attitude of the user of a product or services. This study reviewed the related literature about mobile money users experience. Quantitative data analysis technique was used in the study. The study contributes positively to the mobile money literature with a framework that highlights the importance of privacy, security, and convenience as an enhancer of mobile money users experience while the system anxiety negatively depicts the mobile money users. We explicate the theoretical contributions, implications for the managers and offers a useful suggestion for the future study.

Application of information and communication technology for internationalization of Nigerian small- and medium-sized enterprises

Information and communication technology (ICT) has fundamentally transformed business transactions. While its uses have become ubiquitous in the advanced economies, emerging and developing economies are still struggling with the mode and manner of the deployment of ICT for business. Thus, this study seeks to investigate how small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) utilize ICT in Nigeria for business internationalization. To achieve the goal of the study, a mixed‐method was employed. A questionnaire was administered to 265 people consisting of SMEs staff, managers, and owners. Similarly, interviews were conducted with seven SME decision makers. Findings revealed that Nigerian SMEs used ICT tools, such as websites and social media platforms, for internationalization. The findings also revealed that the challenges of ICT did not affect its application by these SMEs, which contrasts with many previous studies. Furthermore, this study identified privacy concerns, internet problems, cyber insecurity, trust, and system anxiety as new challenges facing the application of ICT tools by SMEs. Similarly, the findings showed that lack of ICT competence and strategic focus of ICT applications are internal problems facing Nigerian SMEs. These findings provide insight for practitioners and academia on the internationalization of Nigeria SMEs and the application of ICT to promote business growth.

Smartphone Usage Among Millennial in Finland and Implications for Marketing Segmentation Strategies: Lessons for Nigeria

The study examines smart phone usage by millennial based on different criteria of operating system, Wi-Fi, text messaging, internet surfing and social media. The study used quantitative methodology and data were gathered with online questionnaires with 391 young smartphone users in Finland. The Millennial were clustered into five levels. The results reveal the prominent status of profiling in a developed market and how marketers in emerging markets can apply segmentation and targeting strategies using instant messaging, text messages, email, mobile app, gamification and social media based on the profile of each segment. Nigerian policy makers should adopt a framework to make smartphone affordable for people as it constitutes a goldmine for marketing professionals on their segmentation and targeting strategies.

Exploring students and teachers activities, experiences and impact of Opón Ìmò mobile learning device on teaching and learning

There has been series of introduction of low-cost learning technologies worldwide such as laptop and tablet computers, especially in developing countries to address uneven standard education which has attracted attention from many researchers and practitioners as reflected in myriad studies. The State Government of Osun in Nigeria following the trend of technology globally introduced Opón Ìmò Initiative to tackle the learning problem through its Opón Ìmò Technology Enhanced Learning System. This study examined the students and teachers activities, experience, and impact of using Opón Ìmò for teaching and learning. Quantitative method was employed using 111 samples including teachers and secondary school leavers. The result shows that learners activities influence learning experiences, while teachers activities on the device negatively affect teaching experiences as surprisingly, teachers ICT experience negatively affect teaching with the device.

Mobile application for pre-screening of Ebola virus disease

Ebola virus disease (EVD), considered viral with asymptomatic and epidemiological clinical manifestation of sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and sore throat. In the endemic area of West Africa with overstretched medical facility and inaccessible medical care, early pre-screening, recognition and detection of the Ebola virus disease features in suspected patients is critical to the containment of the epidemic and minimizing secondary transmission. Mobile devices have gained prominence in every sector of African society, especially in the aspect of its use for socio-economic development. In this article, we developed a self-inference mobile system capable of assisting health practitioners in clinical pre-screening, and serve as a platform for creating awareness about the danger of the contagious disease that has ravaged Africa, especially the West African States. The system is capable of trapping users responses, which in turn triggers the inference engine to provide a pre-screening for further diagnosis. Community awareness assessment of 200 respondents shows that 89% are aware of the various means of EVD transmission, while 95% trust an intelligent self-inference prognostic system in assisting with clinical pre-screening. The results have shown that the system can complement the overstretched medical facilities in the endemic area while providing the right awareness campaign on early detection, prevention, and transmission of EVD. Furthermore, aggregate and analysis of data generated from the application could be used in clinical decision-making and possible prediction of the future disease outbreak.