Mobile-Commerce Usage Challenges among University Students in Uganda: A Case of Kabale University.

Abstract

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is a new trend in e-commerce that covers a number of services that are conducted online with the help of various computing devices. These services include among others; mobile financial services e.g., mobile banking, mobile payments, mobile brokering etc., mobile shopping services e.g., mobile ticketing and mobile auctioning, and mobile entertainment services e.g., mobile music, mobile gaming, mobile movies, etc. Some of these services can help students access the University services easily and generally improve their social wellbeing and generally ease their academic process. University students contribute a big percentage of internet Users in Uganda yet their participation in M-commerce is not felt or least felt in most cases. The study established the Mobile commerce services utilized by university students and ascertained the challenges students face in using M-commerce. This study was conducted at Kabale University with an estimated population of 150 students from the faculty of Computing, library and information science, cross sectional survey method was used where data was collected using google forms and analyzed using SPSS 25 and results were statistically represented inform of tables, charts and graphs using frequencies and percentages. The findings revealed that smartphones and laptops were the top most devices used to access Internet in University. The results further showed that music, gaming and banking were most frequently accessed mobile services online however Cost of maintaining operating Internet, Preference for 'feel and touch' features of products, Security Challenges, Slow speed of the Internet, Lack of Credit Cards and Payment Systems were cited among the key challenges though skilled manpower was not a challenge to students. Therefore, the study suggests that since students own mobile devices and they can access mobile services given that they have skills, the university ought to address some of the cited challenges to have a conducive mobile commerce environment for the students.