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This study aims to examine the influence of procedural capabilities for public procurement participation on small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) sales performance in Tanzania. Also, the study establishes the interaction effect of internet marketing capabilities on the relationship between procedural capabilities and sales performance.

The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis and PROCESS macro for simple interaction analysis to analyse cross-sectional data that were obtained through questionnaire from surveyed SMEs’ managers. The included SMEs are those that are involved in supplying goods, services and works to public entities in Dodoma, Tanzania.

The findings reveal that procedural capabilities for participation in public procurement enhance SMEs to improve sales performance. Also, there is a significant and positive relationship between internet marketing capabilities and sales performance. Lastly, internet marketing capabilities strengthen the relationship between procedural capabilities and sales performance.

This study is a wake-up call to SMEs to better comprehend public procurement procedures and e-business practices to use the available public procurement opportunities. It is argued that SMEs should invest in technology to market their businesses through social media and online platforms. According to the study, SMEs may benefit from improving their sales performance by fully utilising their internet marketing capabilities and participating in public procurement opportunities.

This study adds to the two main streams of literature that emphasise harnessing public procurement opportunities for SMEs (through public procurement participation) and leveraging internet marketing capabilities for SMEs to improve their sales performance.

There is a contradictive debate on factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness among scholars. This study aims to examine factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness for accessing agricultural marketing information.

A descriptive cross-sectional research design was used with 400 smallholder grape farmers. The use of structured questionnaires, focus group discussions and key informant interviews helped to collect primary data. Data analysis was subjected to descriptive, ordinal logistic regression and thematic approaches.

This study found that farmers were mostly aware of voice calls helping to access buyers and price information. Education, age and sex were the critical factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness among grape smallholder farmers.

This study contributes to scientific knowledge by providing an understanding of the perceived factors on mobile phone usage awareness within the grape subsector to inform policymakers.

The approach to integrate concepts from different disciplines so as to solve the problems facing smallholder farmers has gained momentum in recent years. However, very little is known about how word-of-mouth (WOM) dimensions can be used in agricultural marketing to explain market participation among smallholder farmers. Therefore, this study investigates the perceived usefulness of WOM in explaining smallholder farmers’ market participation.

The cross-sectional design was carried out to survey a sample of 467 smallholder farmers. This study used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 4 to test hypotheses.

The results revealed that WOM dimensions such as expertise differential, strong tie and trustworthiness among smallholder farmers significantly influence the WOM message delivery. Likewise, the findings suggest that WOM message delivery significantly influences market participation among smallholder farmers. Finally, it was revealed that WOM message delivery significantly mediates the relationship between WOM dimensions and market participation.

This study provides useful insights to smallholder farmers on how to use WOM dimensions to enhance more market participation in formal markets, especially through proper WOM message delivery.

The current study solves the problem of information asymmetry among smallholder farmers through WOM. It is perhaps the first study to establish the link between WOM dimensions and market participation among smallholder farmers in the context of developing countries.

Amidst the scarcity of resources, it is undisputable that an effective public procurement performance measurement system (PMS) is required particularly in county governments, especially for Kenya to realize its ambitions in devolved governance system. County governments cannot be effectively evaluated on their performance if the long-term, strategic impact of public procurement processes and projects is not captured. Arising from this backdrop, this study aims to determine the predictors of strategic procurement performance metrics (SPPM) adoption in public procurement PMS of county governments.

Anchored on institutional theory and public sector scorecard model, a survey research design was adopted where data were collected through census from 115 respondents working in procurement, finance and stores department of Kakamega county government. Data were collected using questionnaire (75.56% response rate) and key informant interviews, and analyzed by using multiple regression model and ordinal logistic regression models.

Multiple regression model and ordinal logistics regression revealed that national government support negatively and significantly, and regulatory framework positively and significantly affects the adoption of SPPM.

There is need for formal mechanism that will enable the national government in partnership with the council of governors to be proactively involved in developing procurement performance measurement capacity of county governments. This study’s findings also provide suggestions for a working regulatory framework required for the adoption of SPPM by county governments.

This work adds value to the prevailing body of knowledge on public procurement PMS in the public sector.

Higher learning institutions (HLIs) need to have quality service facilities to achieve customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth (WoM). The purpose of this study is to assess customer satisfaction as a mediator of service facility and WoM in the context of Tanzania's HLIs.

A mixed-methods approach was used to achieve the study objectives. Stratified and simple random sampling techniques were adopted to obtain the names of 201 students in HLIs in Tanzania. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were used to test the hypotheses.

The findings show that service facility is significantly associated with both WoM and customer satisfaction, while the relationship between customer satisfaction and WoM is significant. The study also found that customer satisfaction mediates the relationship between service facility and WoM.

The practitioners of HLIs can invest in improving service facility. Service quality is an important component that impacts WoM in HLIs. This is the most important element that impacts students' satisfaction and WoM in HLIs more than any other element of service quality.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge on the role of customer satisfaction in mediating the relationship between service facility and WoM in the context of Tanzania's HLIs. This study also presents a methodological contribution for a better understanding of the predictors of customer satisfaction in HLIs from the students' point of view.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between innovation capabilities (INVC) and export performance (EXPERF) of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, the paper aims to investigate the moderating effect of risk-taking propensity (RSTP) in the relationship between INVC and the SMEs’ EXPERF.

A cross-sectional survey design was used and data were collected through structured questionnaires from 250 manufacturing exporting SMEs in Tanzania. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the measurement model. The hypotheses were empirically tested using PROCESS macro test.

The findings affirm that INVC is a significant predictor of EXPERF. Additionally, RSTP was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between INVC and EXPERF.

Although the study was able to accomplish its overall objective, it is limited in terms of the context under which the study was conducted. This study covered only manufacturing SMEs in a single country, Tanzania. Hence, the findings should be interpreted with caution since each country has specific institutional environments that support innovation.

The findings of this study expand the application of the resource-based view (RBV) theory in exporting context. The study revealed how INVC as an intangible resource can lead to successful performance. Hence, the findings of this study broaden the applicability of RBV theory. Also, this study contributes to the debate about the innovation-export performance relationship by revealing a moderating role of RSTP in the relationship between INVC and EXPERF.

Factors influencing the use of mobile phone technologies for agricultural market information access remain a mixed debate, and there are contradictive views among studies. This study examined factors influencing the use of mobile phone technologies for agricultural marketing information access. The study is anchored on the technological acceptance model (TAM).

A descriptive cross-sectional research design was adopted with a sample size of 400 grape smallholder farmers. A structured questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGDs) were used to gather data. Descriptive, ordinal logistic regression and thematic approaches were used in data analysis.

The study confirmed grape smallholder farmers generally considered mobile phone technologies as an appropriate communication channel to stay informed about agricultural marketing information. It was found that reliable electricity supply, relevance, timeliness, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of mobile phone technologies influenced the level of agricultural marketing information access.

This research is limited to a selected number of grape smallholder farmers in Dodoma, Tanzania, and leaves out those without mobile phones. Also, the study was cross-sectional in nature, so it may not be necessarily capable of consistently providing critical and consistent information about the same population over a series of times.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by integrating the use of mobile phone technologies to access marketing information in informing policy and decision-making processes to promote grape marketing.

This study aims to examine the influence of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions (innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy) on the export performance (EXP) of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

In this study a cross-sectional survey design was used and data were collected from 250 managers of manufacturing-exporting SMEs in Tanzania. The developed conceptual model was empirically tested using confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression.

The results reveal that innovativeness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy have a significant positive influence on EXP. However, proactiveness hurts EXP. Additionally, findings indicate that the dimensions of EO do not have an equal impact on SMEs’ EXP.

This study only covered SMEs; future studies would be advised to include large firms because they may behave differently with respect EO due to their resource advantages. Furthermore, this study was conducted in a single country, Tanzania, and thus the findings should be interpreted cautiously, since each country has specific institutional frameworks that foster entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture in a different way.

The context of this study contributes significantly to the research’s originality. The study contributes to the body of knowledge on the EO-EXP link in developing countries, where research on EO-export is scant, and it further contributes to the debate on the EO-EXP link by demonstrating that the dimensions of EO do not have an equal impact on SMEs’ EXP, and accordingly a disaggregated approach would be more meaningful. Furthermore, the study contributes with regards the role of competitive aggressiveness and autonomy in improving SMEs’ EXP, which has received little attention in previous studies.

This paper examines the relationship between product innovation (PRODIN), process innovation (PROCIN) and export performance (EXPF) of manufacturing small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, the paper investigates the moderating effect of marketing innovation (MAKIN) in the relationship between PRODIN, PROCIN and the SMEs' EXPF.

A cross-sectional survey design was used and data were collected through structured questionnaires from 250 manufacturing exporting SMEs in Tanzania. CFA was used to test the measurement model. The hypotheses were empirically tested using PROCESS macro test.

The findings suggest that PRODIN is a significant determinant of EXPF. However, PROCIN was found to have a significant negative effect on EXPF. Additionally, MAKIN was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between PRODIN, PROCIN and EXPF.

This study covered only manufacturing SMEs. Future studies can include large firms because they may behave differently on innovations due to the resources advantage they have. Also, because only a single country context was used, the findings of this study should be interpreted with caution.

Managers of exporting SMEs should develop and cultivate PRODIN and MAKIN to nurture EXPF of their firms.

The findings of this study extend the application of resource-based view theory in exporting context by unpacking the process through which resources result in successful performance. Also, this study contributes to the debate about the innovation–EXPF relationship by establishing a moderating effect of MAKING in the relationship between PRODIN, PROCIN and EXPF.