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DESIGNING RURAL CROPS MARKETING WEB APPLICATION:

VISUALIZING THE MARKET INTERACTIVELY FOR THE

CUSTOMER SIDE

YAMEN BATCH

UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA

2007


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Designing Rural Crops Marketing Web Application:

VisualizingtheMarket 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


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v

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.


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vi

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.


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viii

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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ix

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

1.7Summary............................................................................................. 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


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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


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xii

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


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xiii

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


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48

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


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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 Addison-

Wesley 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), 23-

35.

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 Computer-

Mediated 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

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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-Universitt 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 ONIONS INFORMATION NET. System Sciences, 2001.

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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

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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

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Mwabu, G., & Thorbecke, E. (2001). Rural Development, Growth and

Poverty in AfricaJournal of African Economies, 13.

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255.


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xcix

SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

Survey questionnaire for

Objective

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

prototype


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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 [ ]


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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 browse products more

quickly

1 2 3 4 5

2. Using the prototype would improve

my buying method

1 2 3 4 5

3. Using the prototype would

motivate me to buy using it

1 2 3 4 5

4. Using the prototype would enhance

the effectiveness of my buying

transaction

1 2 3 4 5


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5. Using the prototype would make it

easier to buy

1 2 3 4 5

6. I see the prototype useful

for me

1 2 3 4 5

C. CLEARNESS (USER INTERFACE)

7. I could differentiate between titles 1 2 3 4 5

8. The prototype is compatible while

browsing it

1 2 3 4 5

9. The prototype has menu of key

content in the main page

1 2 3 4 5

10. The prototype uses supportive

photos

1 2 3 4 5

11. The prototype has features of users'

feedback

1 2 3 4 5


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12. The prototype a clear

structure

1 2 3 4 5

Thank you for your cooperation

APPENDIX B

THE PROTOTYPE (THE CUSTOMER MODULE)


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SELECT PRODUCT TYPE:


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VIEW MAP FOR A CERTAIN PRODUCT:


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VIEW PRODUCT LIST IN A CERTAIN AREA:


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