ICT adoption in Cameroon SME: application of Bass diffusion model^*

* This paper was presented at the Thirty Fifth International Conference on Information Systems, Auckland 2014.

James Pick is the accepting Associate Editor for this article.

ABSTRACT

In almost all low-income countries, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a primary engine for the country’s economic development. While many information and communications technology (ICT) diffusion studies exist, only few focus on low-income countries and even fewer employ Bass-based analysis to examine ICT diffusion in these countries. This study applies the Bass diffusion model to understand SME adoption of ICT in Cameroon, a low-income country. The Bass model was employed because of its predictive capacity. We find that diffusion of ICT among SMEs in the context of a low-income economy is largely driven by forces of imitation rather than forces of innovation. Contributing to practice, this study finds that SMEs with greater sizes, multiple plants, and whose owners have higher education have a greater tendency to adopt ICT early. The theoretical contribution of the paper is applying the well-recognized Bass model from marketing to the IT/IS field and applying it within a low-income country environment by evaluating diffusion of ICTs among SMEs in Cameroon.

KEYWORDS:

• Bass diffusion model
• SME
• small and medium enterprises
• diffusion
• ICT adoption

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Habib Ntwoku is currently a statistical consultant in an analytics company that serves the subprime industry. He is a Certified SAS Advanced Programmer that maintains a thirst for research-oriented tasks in both industry and academia. He recently completed his M.S in Applied Statistics at Kennesaw State University (2014–2016). Prior to his foray in the analytics field, he obtained an MBA specialized in Innovation and Technology from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (2009–2011) where he sparked his interest in IT diffusion in low-income countries. His research interests have since extended to Technology diffusion in low-income communities across the world. In recent years, he has focused on applying advanced web-scraping and machine-learning techniques to investigate behavioral/economic outcomes in low-income communities. He has collaborated actively with researchers in several other disciplines, particularly public education on problems of predicting teacher attrition in high-needs public schools in the USA. Mr Ntwoku has participated in a couple of conferences and workshops in USA, Japan, and Sweden just to name a few.

Dr Solomon Negash is Professor of Information Systems and Director of mobile apps development lab (madLab) in the Department of Information Systems, Coles College of Business, Kennesaw State University. He earned his PhD from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California; a master’s in Information Systems, MBA, and a bachelor’s in engineering His research focuses on mobile applications, classroom technology, technology adoption, technology transfer, and outsourcing. He has published two-dozen journal papers, two edited books, and 60 scholarly conference papers, and a book chapter. Professor Negash’s experience includes 20 years in industry and 17 years in academia. He continues to engage in business consulting with a focus on mobile app development. The madLab he founded at Kennesaw State University creates synergy between student talent and challenges of business app development. Professor Negash has received distinguished intellectual contribution award, distinguished e-Learning award, distinguished graduate teacher award, distinguished service award, and international goodwill and understanding award.

Dr Peter Meso is Professor of Information Technology in the School of Science and Technology at Georgia Gwinnett College and the editor in chief of the African Journal of Information Systems. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from Kent State University and a Master of Business Administration Degree from the United States International University – Africa. Dr Meso has in the past served as a faculty member at Georgia State University and Kent State University in the USA. He has served in editorial roles at the Journal of Global Information Management and the Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. He is a member of various professional information systems organizations. Dr Meso has over 70 academic publications and is a past recipient of the best paper award at the International Conference of Information Systems (ICIS) as well as the Faculty Award for Outstanding Research and Scholarly Activities at Georgia Gwinnett College. He is an authority in the areas of Information and Communication Technologies in Africa, and in the conceptualization and modeling of information systems. His current research interests include the behavioral and managerial interactions of people and information technology particularly as they relate to the design and development of information systems; the qualities and attributes of information and of emergent information technologies; systems security; and global information systems. Dr Meso’s research has appeared in top-quality journals – including Information Systems Research, Journal of the AIS, European Journal of Information Systems, Requirements Engineering, Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences, IEEE Transactions, Information Systems Journal and the Journal of Global Information Management, among others.

Notes

* This paper was presented at the Thirty Fifth International Conference on Information Systems, Auckland 2014.

James Pick is the accepting Associate Editor for this article.