E-COMMERCE SKILLS EXPECTED OF BUSINESS EDUCATION STUDENTS FOR EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF SMALL SCALE BUSINESSES IN IMO STATE

Abstract

The study was carried out to examine the e-commerce skills expected of Business education students for effective management of small scale businesses in Imo State. Descriptive survey was used to structure the study. Three research questions were raised in line with the specific purposes to guide the study. A self-designed 4-point rating scale questionnaire tagged: E-commerce   Skills Questionnaire   (ECSQ) was  used  to collect  data  from the respondents, where 4 points stand for Very High Extent (VHE), 3 points stand for High Extent (HE), 2 points stand for Low Extent (LE), and 1 point stands for Very Low Extent (VLE).The questionnaire was validated by two experts and was further subjected to internal consistency testing using  Cronbach  Alpha  Reliability  Coefficient  which  gave  a  reliability  result  of  0.78.  The population of the study consisted of one hundred and thirty five (135) final year (400 level) Business Education Students of Alvan Ikoku University of Education, Owerri Imo State. There was no sample for the study since the population was small and manageable. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the collected data, while t-test was used to test the research hypotheses.  Findings suggested that e- advertising, electronic communication and e-accounting are among the e-commerce  skills expected  of  Business  education students for effective management of small scale businesses in Imo State. The test of hypotheses also  revealed that gender has no significant difference in  the mean responses  of  Business  education  students  on  e-commerce skills expected of Business education students for effective management of small scale businesses in Imo State.  It was recommended among others that e-advertising, electronic communication and e-accounting skills should be considered as basic requirement in the training programme of Business education students for effective management of small scale businesses in Imo state.