The Influence of Social Media and Social Environment on
Entrepreneur Motivation in Medan During Pandemic Covid-19
Hafiza Adlina, Feronica Simanjorang and Nana Dyki Dirbawanto
Department of Bussiness Administration, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Indonesia
Keywords: entrepreneur, social media, motivation, social environment, entrepreneurial motivation, Covid-19
Abstract: The purpose of this research is to analyse: (1) The influence of social media on entrepreneur motivation in
Medan during pandemic of Covid-19 (2) The influence of social environment on entrepreneur motivation in
Medan during pandemic of Covid-19. The type of this research is qualitative approach is beneficial in
exploring an area where little is known. The population of this research are young entrepreneurs in Medan
who owned coffee shop. The result of research shows that entrepreneurs are motivated by social media and
their social environment. Furthermore, entrepreneurs devised several social media to reach their audience and
target market. The social environment helps young entrepreneurs to develop their business strategies to
survive the competitions during the pandemic of Covid-19 in Medan.
1 INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is a develop country with a large population
that can be found in China, India, and the US. The
increasing population will also have impact on the
number of employees in Indonesia. The more
developed the country, the more educated people will
be, and many more people will be unemployed
because of the narrow employment opportunities.
Development will be more successful if supported by
entrepreneurs who can work with limited capabilities.
Unemployment is the term for people who do not
work at all, are looking for work, or looking for
decent work. To reduce unemployment, one of the
most effective ways is to use the labour as new jobs
through entrepreneurship. Nowadays, college
graduates and undergraduates who are still
unemployed and confused about what to do when
graduating from college are more willing to become
educated unemployed than entrepreneurship.
Unemployment in developing countries has become
serious issues and rise along with the pandemic
covid-19 that happened specifically in Indonesia.
Pandemic Covid-19 made people change their
behaviour where they speed up the digitalization era.
The main source of information for everyone
nowadays is social media and their inner social
environment. Therefore, the social media and social
environment has a role to motivated people in many
things that we do in our daily life. March 2019,
Pandemic covid-19 came to Indonesia which pushed
every aspect of people life to be living in limited
access to outside world, where people could not go
outside, and the government announce a regulation to
reduce outdoor activities and close all types of
existing businesses and offices. This event caused a
huge damage in Indonesia, not just the increase of
unemployment but also economic downturn since the
pandemic happened.
Due to limited activities that can be done for
people, some people see an opportunity in their
surroundings that helped them to turn restricted
access into something useful and creative for
themselves and others which creating a new
enterprise and opportunities. Many of
unemployment’s tries things and become self-made
entrepreneurs. Their condition helped them to
develop their new skills while they stay at home
waiting for the pandemic to become endemic.
Entrepreneurship is an ability and knowledge to
be a strength in facing work or business difficulties to
survive and achieve success. Moreover, if knowledge
and experience in the field of entrepreneurship starts
at a young age such as students. Entrepreneurial
competence is the ability of a person to create a new
business, previously that person has thought about the
bad risks and uncertain things in obtaining profits and
development with a good understanding by mixing
458
Adlina, H., Simanjorang, F. and Dirbawanto, N.
The Influence of Social Media and Social Environment on Entrepreneur Motivation in Medan During Pandemic Covid-19.
DOI: 10.5220/0011905100003460
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 2022) - Human Security and Agile Government, pages 458-462
ISBN: 978-989-758-618-7; ISSN: 2975-8300
Copyright
c
2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
and matching the skills needed to take advantage of
opportunities.
Entrepreneurial competence is also someone's
knowledge in doing business in their field or someone
who has the skills and then applied in the habit of
thinking and acting in business. The competence of a
person will increase and continue to be of good value
if the person is willing to retrain that potential and
always considers it in the training of human
resources. How entrepreneurs behave during
pandemic of covid-19 has made a difference in how
events have been handled in recessions. The creative
and innovative behaviours of entrepreneurs lead them
to use social media to develop their business and
engage with their customers.
Social Media (SM) has grown by leaps and
bounds in recent years. Its use has made easier for
entrepreneurs to advertise and sell their products
especially during pandemic of Covid-19. The
influence of SM and digital tools has been overlooked
in research to date regarding its possible influence on
entrepreneur motivation to promote their business.
SM can serve as an avenue where they can effectively
market their products and reach out to their potential
clients, therefore encouraging business creation and
supporting business survival and growth.
SM playing a massive role in influencing the
marketing landscape by enabling transition away
from traditional media to focus on digital marketing.
Opportunities for businesses growth have risen
exponentially as SM takes the important role in taking
off a business. SM marketing can improve the
visibility of the business and build an engagement
with customer by provide interaction and attention as
the most relevant components (Gomez et al., 2019).
Increase in visibility has been a primary reason for
social media use by entrepreneurs which leads to
attracting new customers and an increase in sales if
they can linkage the social environment into their
platform.
For some reason, entrepreneur’s motivational
state of mind plays a central role in his/her
organisational success (Amabile, 1997; Shane,
Locke, & Collins, 2003) and context may influence
that motivational state. How entrepreneurs feel about
their entrepreneurial activities is highly important in
connecting an entrepreneur’s creativity to innovative
organisational outcomes (Cardon et al., 2009).
Nevertheless, while entrepreneurs’ attitudes, feelings
and emotions have received considerable attentions,
it is still unclear how such motivational factors are
formed and sustained (e.g., Baum & Locke, 2004;
Foo, Uy, & Baron, 2009; Segal et al., 2005) and how
other individuals may provide a context for
entrepreneurs’ motivations (Carsrud & Brännback,
2011). Entrepreneurs can be seen as persons who
need a continuous state of motivation with respect to
their work because they need to update a business
network every day and get attention from new ones
(potential clients/consumers) (Forbes, 2019).
Social environment in entrepreneurial activity is
linkage of an individual with society in perspectives
such as resources, friendship, family, norms, beliefs,
culture, economic, political, etc. because social
environment is an extension of social capital, and it
has been defined with characteristics of relations of
trust, common rules, norms, sanctions, reciprocity,
exchange, connectedness, networks and groups
(Pretty, & Ward, 2001). Social environment relates to
the people, planet, and profit (Thompson, & Kiefer,
2011). Entrepreneurship is a reason of the social
change, and it is influenced by changes at the societal
level (Welter, 2011). Relationship of
entrepreneurship and environment has been seen as a
more viable approach, the further environment has
been considered more important in understanding
about the formation of new organizations (Mazzarol
et al., 1999). And the socio-political environment is
too much influential because it can create or destroy
entrepreneurship in the country (Luthans et al., 2000).
Based on the explanation above, entrepreneurial
motivation is the key predictor for an individual’s
participation in the entrepreneurial process. An
entrepreneurship phenomenon is impossible without
the willingness of people to play the game (p. 258,
Shane et al. 2003). Furthermore, Shane and his co-
authors argued that understanding the development of
human motivation (i.e., entrepreneurial motivation) is
key to explaining who pursues entrepreneurial
opportunities.
Individuals lacking entrepreneurial motivation are
unlikely to engage in entrepreneurial behaviours or
actions required for their transformation into
entrepreneurs (Miller et al. 2012). Therefore, in this
article the author wants to analyse (1) The influence
of social media on entrepreneur motivation in Medan
during pandemic of Covid-19 (2) The influence of
social environment on entrepreneur motivation in
Medan during pandemic of Covid-19.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Entrepreneurs are performing entrepreneurial
activities in an environment of uncertainty, by
recognizing that this process occurs in a social
environment in which an entrepreneur can reduce
uncertainty, and it increases entrepreneurial success
The Influence of Social Media and Social Environment on Entrepreneur Motivation in Medan During Pandemic Covid-19
459
(Autio et al., 2014). Therefore, choice is an
antecedent of entrepreneurial motivation as a
response to a decision to create new values for
business growth. According to Shane et al., (2003) &
Erdelyi (2010), entrepreneurial activity can only take
place when they have entrepreneurs who identify,
rate, avail the opportunities and make decisions
related to them.
The motivation of entrepreneurs are not
always clear and precise, sometimes been called into
questions. Willingness to accept change is something
that be owned by an entrepreneurs, especially during
pandemic of covid-19. Looze & Desai (2020) found
that business owners saw the effects of pandemic on
their business as negative and reaching customers
without having SM as a challenge to face. During the
pandemic of covid-19, SM openness and connectivity
overcomes the inability or difficulty entrepreneurs
experience in identifying and reaching out the
environment (Kuhn et al., 2016; Nylander &
Rudstrom, 2011). SM has allowed entrepreneurs to
connect and establish relationship based on similar
interest which allow for partnerships that drives co-
creation and innovation (Bhimani et al., 2018). Usage
of SM has been shown to improve their firm
performance which is essential to entrepreneur’s
business.
Entrepreneurs use SM for various purposes
and the use of SM gone beyond maintance of personal
connections for entrepreneurs. SM allow for
networking and interaction with a wider environment
from a different geographical location (Wang et al.,
2016). Nowadays, social and interactive feature being
an inherent part of modern day customer. The
emergence of SM has changed the communication
paradigm including customers’ pattern of media
usage. Customers traditionally played a passive role
as product recipients, but today they actively involved
in the communications process as active seekers of
branded content. Research has also indicated the
importance of generating customer engagement via
the SM (Habibi et al., 2014; Hollebeek et al., 2014).
Social environment in entrepreneurial activity
is linkage of an individual with society in
perspectives such as resources, friendship, family,
economic, political, historical, etc. Because social
environment is an extension of social capital, and it
has been defined with characteristics of relations of
trust, common rules, norms, sanctions, reciprocity,
exchange, connectedness, networks and groups
(Pretty, & Ward, 2001). Similar to the importance of
SM, social environment also has an important role
that motivates an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial
motivation is the key predictor for an individual’s
participation in the entrepreneurial process (Carsrud
& Brännback, 2011).
3 METHODS
The research method for this study is qualitative.
Qualitative Research is research that departs from the
perspective of the focus of research referring to the
quality of meaning (Maleong, 2014). In this research,
researchers used deep interview with five coffeeshop
owners in Medan to gain their experience and their
perspectives about the influence of social media and
social environment during this pandemic Covid-19
event.
These data will be analysed in a predetermined
theoretical framework to prove that the hypothesis is
accurate and finally able to answer the research
question. The collected data was analysed using
descriptive analysis to better describe. To systematize
the data collected, this analysis is carried out through
stages, namely: data reduction, data exposure,
description, and verification as well as drawing
conclusions.
The goal of descriptive research is to describe a
phenomenon and its characteristics. This research is
more concerned with what rather than how or why
something has happened. Therefore, observation and
survey tools are often used to gather data (Gall et al.,
2007).
4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
4.1 The Influence of Social Media on
Entrepreneur Motivation in Medan
during Pandemic Covid-19
Pandemic of covid-19 is not only a public health
concern but also an economic crisis. The pandemic
has many impacts in many ways of people lives. This
makes it hard to anticipate and plan. Therefore, it is
believed that the pandemic not only increased the
challenges, but also affected the motivation of
entrepreneurs.
SM has an influence for entrepreneur especially
for their motivation, where the most people share
their daily life, their favourites and everything that
they do every day. For some of the informant, SM
media has become their daily motivational media to
develop their personal self and their brand or in this
case their coffee shop. The owner explained that SM
is a communication facility that really supports them
ICOSOP 2022 - International Conference on Social and Political Development 4
460
during the pandemic of covid-19. Activity restrictions
indirectly require entrepreneurs to use SM’s
capabilities to reach potential consumers according to
the target and help improve the business performance.
In the other hand, SM rise the motivational impact for
young people to reach an opportunity in many
industries.
Since the breakout of covid-19, people tend to use
internet for daily entertainment and to support any
aspect of life. For example, people or any company
are using internet and social media to do their
business meeting or family gathering. People are also
can easily access and getting information about how
famous entrepreneurs and influencer’s life. It can
stimulate people to have entrepreneur intention and
motivation especially on this pandemic covid 19 eras.
Social media become one of the most needs that
people consume every single day, and since its
outbreak, people tend to become social influencer
from their account in many digital platforms. People
are trying to have a creative content that can be sold
in many digital platforms. This behaviour can also
count as entrepreneur motivation, and many teenagers
do this kind of thing.
This entrepreneur motivation can be growth from
new normal daily activities. Since the outbreak of
pandemic covid 19, students and collegian are using
video meeting platform to have a class. This new
behaviour can stimulate the new perspective of how
using the internet positively. And many students and
collegian can have a new sense to have many creative
mindsets to increase entrepreneur motivation.
Our findings show that SM’s virtual community
can influence entrepreneur motivation as it provides
insights into customers, brand awareness, feedback,
new product ideas marketing strategies etc. In
addition, active participation visually constructed
through SM is believed to enhance customer
engagement during the pandemic of covid-19. Vohra
& Bhardwaj (2017) observed that participation
characterized by mutual information sharing creates a
positive feeling of instilling trust in users and
increasing trust in the community.
4.2 The Influence of Social
Environment on Entrepreneur
Motivation in Medan during
Pandemic Covid-19
Pandemic of covid-19 crisis is a new and ongoing
situation of unknown time. This disruption to society
has caused many different problems, generated
negative reaction leading to crisis, and led to changes
in social environment. In addition, Pandemic has
changed the way of people communicate with each
other. People change their social environment from
face to face to online interaction. Some environments
may be more stable than others and make it easier to
judge how a business will be impacted by
environmental events. Social environment has
become daily influence for entrepreneur where the
influence has become their motivation from their
family and friends. They live their life and how they
stay motivated by their social environment. Most of
entrepreneurs spend their days within their
environment which make them influenced their way
of business. Social environment has become the
closest influence for entrepreneurs to develop their
skill and their selves.
Our findings show that social environment are
the pull factors related to a need for a change in
lifestyle. Even though the pandemic indirectly change
the social environment, the amount of public interest
in coffee shop motivates the owner to start their
business in this pandemic era. This is consistent with
Sun & Xu (2017) that the need for lifestyle changes,
environmental reasons, independence and social
networks are related to pull factors..
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this review, we summarize and integrate the wide
body of research surrounding entrepreneurial
motivation. In doing so, we develop a roadmap that
both outlines the extant literature and highlights
opportunities for future research. Motivation is a
cornerstone of the entrepreneurial process. Our
review reinforces the conclusion that entrepreneurial
motivation drives essential behaviours related to
venture initiation, growth, and exit. Although the
forceful nature of motivation is unquestionable, the
understanding of its pathways of operation still
requires further elaboration by scholars. Our review
displays the drastically uneven coverage given to
different aspects of motivation throughout the
entrepreneurial process and the relative lack of
integration of different types of motives that jointly
propel behaviour. We hope this review makes the
somewhat fragmented research on entrepreneurial
motivation more accessible and facilitates future
contributions to our understanding of what drives the
entrepreneurial process
The Influence of Social Media and Social Environment on Entrepreneur Motivation in Medan During Pandemic Covid-19
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