Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) have been widely deployed in developmental programs and this has lead to the creation of a new field ICT for development (ICT4D). Within the context of ICT4D e-services are developed and some of these include e-Commerce, e-Government, e-Health and e-Judiciary. ICT4D projects allow Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in rural areas to increase sales and gain the market share on the global market. However, many of these ICT4D projects in marginalized areas fail, because these areas lack the required resources to support ICTs. SMMEs still face problems in marketing their products on the global market. This paper presents the design and the implementation of a rewarding and negotiation application for a shopping portal to improve the marketing of products for rural entrepreneurs. The shopping portal has been setup for Dwesa community, a marginalized area in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The proposed system, called the Dwesa Rewarding Program enables customers buying online to get points for some of the activities done on the shopping portal. It also allows customers to negotiate and make offers when purchasing and get rewarded for buying online. One achievement of this system is the establishment of negotiation rules, which allows fairness in rewarding customers.

As a marketing strategy the system also provides the initial steps towards implementing a negotiation environment that emulates real-life negotiation transactions (which are typical in these communities), thus improving the customer experience on the shopping portal. The paper explains a customer loyalty application which could be use to effectively reward customers.

Keywords: ICT4D, e-Commerce, e-Marketing, negotiation, e-Services, DRP