Taking Advantage of Social Conformity in Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Objective – To increase firm performance, the stakeholders have been striving and working hard to achieve company goals. Prior research on entrepreneurship theories and influencing factors have been abundant especially in the sensemaking of the current dynamic environment and disruptive innovations. Social conformity is an act of following the majority in order to be liked, to be accepted or due to the group pressure. The literatures on social conformity mostly are in journals of psychology and very limited number of these journals are in the field of entrepreneurship. Methodology/Technique – This paper aims to examine the effects of social conformity hereinafter refer to purchase conformity and the factors influencing the purchase conformity to boost sales rate, namely social status, social influence, social ties and social comparison using the mixed-method methodology on 86 adult respondents located in Jakarta. Findings – The result shows that the social comparison has the biggest influence compared to social influence and social ties. Conformity in a deeper sense can benefit the company by predicting the future trend of the majority. Novelty – The ability to predict or even create the majority trend before the trend hits will boost the sales rate and give more competitive advantages to the company. Future research should address the individual psychological factors and the strategies of the firm to increase purchase conformity. Type of Paper: Empirical Keywords: Social Conformity; Social Ties; Social Comparison; Social Status; Purchase Conformity Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Princes E.; Manurung, A. H., 2020. Taking Advantage of Social Conformity in Entrepreneurship, J. Mgt. Mkt. Review, 5(1) 64 – 73. https://doi.org/10.35609/jmmr.2020.5.1(6) JEL Classification: M31, M21.