Rural consumers' adoption of CRM in a developing country context

This paper illustrates how understanding consumer preferences through market research may enhance CRM adoption among the rural customers of a developing country like Bangladesh. It presents the case of Community Information Centre (CIC) established by Grameenphone, a company owned by Telenor, the Norwegian telecommunications company and Grameen Bank, the Nobel prize winning micro credit organisation in the rural settings of Bangladesh. The paper shows that CIC is an innovative way of building and maintaining customer relationships and technological interface with the financially constrained consumers in a poor developing economy like Bangladesh

CRIBs (Climate Relevant Innovation-system Builders): an effective way forward for international climate technology policy

National systems of innovation (NSIs) provide the context within which all processes of technology development, transfer and uptake occur - they refer to the network of actors (e.g. firms, universities, research institutes, government departments, NGOs) within which innovation occurs, and the strength and nature of the relationships between them. Nurturing NSIs in relation to climate technologies provides a powerful new focus for international policy with potential to underpin more sustained and widespread development and transfer of climate technologies. This working paper builds on an invited presentation by one of the authors at a workshop on NSIs convened by the Technology Executive Committee (TEC) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It identifies policy recommendations for consideration of the TEC. The intention is both to inform possible recommendations by the TEC to the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) and to highlight potential areas for future work that the TEC could undertake on this issue

EXAMINING INTERNET USAGE PATTERNS ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF MARGINALISED COMMUNITIES: THE CASE OF COMMUNITY INFORMATION CENTRES IN GHANA

In this paper, we explore the socio-economic effects of internet use at the community information centres (CICs) on livelihoods in three regions of Ghana. Sustainable livelihood framework was used as a lens to understand the phenomena being studied. Primary and secondary data collection methods were used. Three CICs in three regions were purposively selected and qualitative research method was adopted for the study. The data were analysed using Nvivo. The findings showed that sending email information was largely the reason why people used the Internet. We found that through the Internet, people learn, develop new business ideas and expand the market for their businesses. Internet service users cut costs of operation as well as increasing returns on investment. The internet as a social technology has also made business promotion and product launch accessible and affordable. Several small businesses have found ways to use theInternet to increase their brand awareness and get more clients at a minimal cost, and improved social discovery. With social networks like Face book and Twitter, people have easily kept up with all old friends and also made new ones both far and near. Despite these benefits, the use of Internet services at the CICs was bedeviled with some challenges such aspoor internet connectivity, cost of internet services and lack of staff skills to leverage its potential and empower clients. The result of the study provides a deeper understanding of the subject area, based on empirical evidence from the three regions of Ghana. The study recommended that CIC staff should develop a mind-set that is much more customer-focused and should treat the most underprivileged members of the communitiesastheirmostvaluedcustomersaswellastryingtounderstandtheirneeds and CIC project initiators need to be aware of the barriers that hinder people in marginalized communities from using CIC services. Efforts should be made to expand the benefits of the technologies to the majority. Failure to do this would mean that very few people would benefit from the CICs and the digital divide between rural and urban areas would still widen

Assessing climate change mitigation technology interventions by international institutions

Contains fulltext : 142206.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Chapter 6 Learning from the Kenyan solar PV innovation history

Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars spent, two thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity, a vital pre-cursor to economic development and poverty reduction. Ambitious international policy commitments seek to address this, but scholarship has failed to keep pace with policy ambitions, lacking both the empirical basis and the theoretical perspective to inform such transformative policy aims. Sustainable Energy for All aims to fill this gap. Through detailed historical analysis of the Kenyan solar PV market the book demonstrates the value of a new theoretical perspective based on Socio-Technical Innovation System Building. Importantly, the book goes beyond a purely academic critique to detail exactly how a Socio-Technical Innovation System Building approach might be operationalized in practice, facilitating both a detailed plan for future comparative research as well as a clear agenda for policy and practice. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138656925_oachapter01.pdf Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138656925_oachapter06.pd

Cyberbullying: The hidden side of college students

The purpose of this study was to investigate how university students perceive their involvement in the cyberbullying phenomenon, and its impact on their well-being. Thus, this study presents a preliminary approach of how college students’ perceived involvement in acts of cyberbullying can be measured. Firstly, Exploratory Factor Analysis (N = 349) revealed a unidimensional structure of the four scales included in the Cyberbullying Inventory for College Students. Then, Item Response Theory (N = 170) was used to analyze the unidimensionality of each scale and the interactions between participants and items. Results revealed good item reliability and Cronbach’s α for each scale. Results also showed the potential of the instrument and how college students underrated their involvement in acts of cyberbullying. Additionally, aggression types, coping strategies and sources of help to deal with cyberbullying were identified and discussed. Lastly, age, gender and course-related issues were considered in the analysis. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed

Gender and the construction of identity within climate technology innovation in Kenya

This paper undertakes an analysis of the discursive construction of the entrepreneurial identity within media on climate technology(CT) innovation in Kenya. Using the STEPS pathways approach along side a post-structuralist feminist identity framework, it explores the way that the narrative of entrepreneur-led innovation may include or exclude the framings of particular actors. The paper draws on ideas of antagonism in identity construction, legitimacy, and access to resources, in order to identify those actors that may perceive themselves as, or be perceived as, more or less legitimate as CT entrepreneurs, thus being more or less likely to gain access to resources for CT innovation. Although the climate technology entrepreneur aligns in some ways with more normatively feminine notions of the caring social entrepreneur, overall the CT entrepreneur remains a masculine identity. Women are underrepresented in media portrayals of CT entrepreneurship.Further, portrayals of women CT entrepreneurs tend to question their legitimacy, depicting them as either requiring the support of men, or as taking up masculine characteristics in order to gain credibility. The paper demonstrates that this might translate into more favourable attitudes towards men CT entrepreneurs when seeking access to institutional support. It recommends further research into the capacity for CT entrepreneurship to effectively incorporate marginalised framings, and where entrepreneurship will fail to meet their needs, it calls for increased support for appropriate alternative processes of climate technology innovation