Street Vending Phenomena: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Street vending is pervasive across the globe, especially in developing countries. It provides an important source of earnings for the unemployed in urban areas, as well as a source of relatively inexpensive goods and services for city residents. However, typical street vendors face a common set of problems, which range from tenuous property rights and harassment from civic authorities to subsistence living and earning. Under this precarious setting, street enterprises have been expanding. The objective of this article is to employ a systematic method to research the studies in this field, extract their findings, and integrate them in order to propose a model that incorporates factors affecting the success of street enterprises. Based on this model, major research issues are outlined to advance the knowledge in the field. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Bookkeeping for Informal Workers: Co-creating with Street Traders

“…It is typical that informal workers do not register their businesses due to varying reasons, such as complex regulations and costs (see for example: [2], [10] in Mexico, and [7,4] in Tanzania). Informal workers operate without business licence, do not pay tax or keep records, they are not covered by social security, and their business is characterised more by survival rather than opportunity [2,10,7,4]. Main characteristics of street traders in Tanzania are summarised in Table 1 Table 2.…”

“…For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, an approximated 72% of employment is informal [1], and consists of small and micro enterprises, self-employment, street trading, and small scale farming [2,3]. Informal workers are characterised more by survival rather than opportunity, and are typically outside of labor legislation or social protection [2,3].…”

“…[2]). However, a limited number of studies have used design science research (DSR) [5,6] to address the challenges of street traders with technology innovation.…”

Technology for street traders in Tanzania: A design science research approach

“…A review of street trading research (Wongtada 2014) shows that more research is needed on several viewpoints to street trading: personal factors, human capital (skills, education, experience, social networks), environment factors (coercion, competition), customer relationships, social capital, financial capital and constraints, strategy (site selection, management, planning, and dealing with coercion), and success factors (Wongtada 2014). In addition, research about practical interventions that empower informal economic workers is rare.…”

“…The estimated impact of informal work to gross national products (GNP) in developing countries is significant (Webb et al 2013;Sparks and Barnett 2010). The informal economy typically consists of small and micro enterprises, self-employment, street trading, smallholder farming, or selling of agricultural products (Wongtada 2014;Böhme and Thiele 2011). The informal economy lacks labour legislation and social protection schemes, and is characterised by survival rather than opportunity.…”