The High Number of Instagram Followers’ Impact on Student Business

Income

S. N. Wahyuni

, R. J. Vijaya

, A. Fauzi

, B. Sudaryatno

, Y. A. Amrullah

, L. Saptyawati

Informatics Management Department, Universitas Amikom Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Information System Department, Universitas Amikom Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Entrepreneurship Department, Universitas Amikom Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Keywords:

Student Business, Income Improvement, Instagram Followers, Entrepreneurships.

Abstract:

Students’ business is a learning media for entrepreneurship students at Universitas Amikom Yogyakarta. A

high number of Instagram followers is one important trust in online selling strategy and important prospective

buyers in the business. This paper aims to analyse number of Instagram followers’ impact on student business

income. Do the high number of Instagram followers give a signiﬁcant impact on student business income

improvement? Using the census sampling, the data was taken from 31 student businesses of entrepreneurship

class. The data analysis uses descriptive statistics by linear regression, describing income percentages in three

months. This study found the number of Instagram followers did not provide a signiﬁcant income increase.

This is due to several things that affect, such as product variant, lack of ability to create fascinating videos and

pictures, and others. The signiﬁcant value of the regression between the Instagram followers’ variable with

the student business average income is 0.66, this value is greater than 0.05. It means that the linearity of both

variables does not meet the linearity criteria, and the linearity between those two variables is weak. If business

owners want to improve their income to 10 million per month, they must have more than 4000 followers.

1 INTRODUCTION

Marketing is an important thing that business owners

need to do to increase proﬁts for the survival of the

business itself. At present, traditional marketing has

begun to be abandoned. This is due to technologi-

cal developments, especially social media, which are

easier to use. Almost everyone uses Instagram, so in-

evitably the business owner must change the market-

ing pattern by adjusting the habit, so that the product

and brand can be known to prospective customers. In

Saudi Arabia, online business women use Instagram

for managing all businesses although they are offered

a signiﬁcant opportunity to create new jobs or new

businesses (Alkhowaiter, 2016) , because this social

media tool is easier, cheaper than others and one of

mobile-based social media is be able to uploading im-

ages and videos (Ting et al., 2015).

In Kuwait, social media especially, Instagram is

used for communication media between banks and

their consumers. The assumption that social media is

especially Instagram is the most effective media to es-

tablish relationships and networks between banks and

customers. Instagram is considered more effective in

the context of building a bank’s image by emphasiz-

ing the importance of visual communication through

social media so that it can penetrate across Arab cul-

tures and practices of global community relations (Al-

Kandari et al., 2019).

In Russia, more than 80% of small business ac-

counts use Instagram and the followers are potential

marketing target of the business. Instagram is able

to optimize features that can support promotions to

increase product sales. Publishing photos or video

of products in Instagram is one of effective product

branding because it can be improving attitudes and

intentions to recommend others to follow the Insta-

gram account (Colliander and Marder, 2018). Insta-

gram is a social media that is very attractive for con-

sumers to make purchase transactions. This is ev-

idenced by the use of Instagram in promoting ﬁve

women’s clothing brands. Instagram is one of easier

social media as an online marketing communication

medium, discussing the factors that cause online en-

trepreneurs to use and choose Instagram as a promo-

tional medium. In December 2014, Instagram regis-

tered users were only 300 million people, where about

100 million new users mostly came from Indonesia,

180

Wahyuni, S., Vijaya, R., Fauzi, A., Sudaryatno, B., Amrullah, Y. and Saptyawati, L.

The High Number of Instagram Follower Impact on Private University Student Business.

DOI: 10.5220/0009866701800184

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Creative Economics, Tourism and Information Management (ICCETIM 2019) - Creativity and Innovation Developments for Global

Competitiveness and Sustainability, pages 180-184

ISBN: 978-989-758-451-0

Japan, and Brazil. An American survey showed that

33% of adolescents aged 13-19 years old tend to pre-

fer. In December 2014, Instagram registered users

were only 300 million people, where about 100 mil-

lion new users mostly came from Indonesia, Japan,

and Brazil. An American survey showed that 33% of

adolescents aged 13-19 years old tend to prefer.

In Malaysia, Instagram is widely used for home

business branding strategies, with some followers of

around 10,000 followers. Instagram is a social net-

working site that plays an important role in shap-

ing home-based business strategies. The main reason

for using Instagram is, Instagram has several advan-

tages compared to other social networking features,

namely, having a ﬁlter. Instagram can display photos

and videos as if they were designed by a professional,

this causes the video potential to look more beautiful

and artistic. Another reason is Instagram’s popular-

ity, the whole world uses the network. The right tar-

get audience. Instagram can ﬁlter the audience. Fur-

thermore, Instagram is a social networking site that is

Word of Mouth. Make it easy for people to become

followers so that they can be interconnected. These

conveniences underlie the reasons for using Instagram

in the home industry in Malaysia to do branding.

Based on the 2015 ”Eurostat” survey, 75% of EU

entrepreneurs use social networks to branding their

products and the proportion is the same as companies

that use the web to promote their products. In Latvia,

about 58% of companies use the Instagram network,

in Lithuania approximately 78% and in Estonia ap-

proximately 80%. But other facts show that Latvians

are more open to using social media networks, espe-

cially Instagram for marketing their business (Grizane

and Jurgelane, 2017).

In Indonesia, Instagram users are mostly youth

from young adolescents to late adolescents aged 10-

22 years old. They used it to communicate with others

and represent themselves. Some of them uploaded re-

ligious messages through posts and captions and these

have a signiﬁcant effect on the way (Nisa, 2018),

But for now, some of the accounts are used for busi-

ness. The high number of Instagram followers can

increase product popularity and be a choice of pro-

moting divergent products and brands (De Veirman

et al., 2017).

The new phenomenon is that the high number

of Instagram business account followers is equiva-

lent with a high business income. The business with

high numbers of followers is found more likable be-

cause they are considered more popular. The popu-

larity is an important thing for consumer trust devel-

opment. The high numbers of followers are to be the

best marketing choice for promoting divergent prod-

ucts, the business owner can boost the brand’s promo-

tion to the follower (De Veirman et al., 2017). This

paper is proposed to seek the evidence whether the

high number of followers gives an impact on stu-

dents’ business income. Universitas Amikom Yo-

gyakarta is one of universities that has entrepreneur-

ship study program in Indonesia. Entrepreneurship

class is one model providing entrepreneurship learn-

ing for students in which they are directed to busi-

ness development study. More than 20% of students

have businesses in various ﬁelds, and all businesses

use Instagram as a media of promoting and branding,

but in the last three months they have decrease of in-

come although the Instagram followers have increase

(Wahyuni and Wibowo, 2018). Therefore, in testing

the impact of Instagram followers on income busi-

ness using the business unit model at the Yogyakarta

Amikom University Indonesia.

2 METHODS

This is an observational study with a cross-sectional

design. In this study, the samples were selected from

31 business students’ units of entrepreneurship class,

which have an average of followers above 100 fol-

lowers and have an income above 1 million rupiahs

every month during the last three months. Observa-

tions were carried out for three months due to the

graph of improvement income. The sampling method

used is census sampling. A questionnaire consists of

four questions: (a) Instagram use (the promotion tools

and the number of followers), (b) Varian of product,

pictures, and (d) customer information (information

source). The data were analysed using statistical soft-

ware to measure frequencies, percentages, and simple

linear regression. The normality test data is conducted

using Kolmogorov Smirnov by comparing the data

distribution to be tested for normality with the stan-

dard normal distribution. The standard normal distri-

bution is data that has been transformed into Z-scores

and assumed to be normal.

3 RESULT

This study found that the average of students’

business income is 1678.2 every month. the num-

ber of Instagram followers does not provide a sig-

niﬁcant income increase. The absolute value of the

student business income variable is 0.181 when com-

pared to the Kolmogorov table with a total sample of

31, namely 0.263, the asymptote value is greater than

The High Number of Instagram Follower Impact on Private University Student Business

181

the absolute value. This shows that the data distribu-

tion is normal, and the value 0.263¿ 0.05. So the data

is normally distributed.

The increase of income around 1-5% and some

even decline. This is due to several things that re-

ally affect, such as Variance of product, Lack of abil-

ity to create fascinating videos and pictures, customer

information (information source) and others. The sig-

niﬁcant value of the regression between the Instagram

follower variable with the student business average in-

come is 0.66. This value is greater than 0.05 which

means that the linearity of both variables does not

meet the linearity criteria, and the linearity of both

of the variables is weak. The average student busi-

ness unit’s income in three months is more than 1-5%.

The resulting study gives the coefﬁcient value of 0.19.

It means that the relationship between the high num-

ber of Instagram followers with students’ business in-

come is very little. The contribution of follower num-

ber factor is 99.81% towards the average income fac-

tor per month. More than 99.81% is inﬂuenced by

other factors such as the promotion tools and the num-

ber of followers), Varian of product, Lack of ability

to create fascinating videos and pictures, customer in-

formation (information source) and others. Based on

the data normality test, the data normalization results

obtained in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Normalized student business variable data test re-

sults.

In Figure 1. There are some data that are close

to the diagonal line, so it is said that the data that

have been tested normally meet the assumptions of

data normality. The signiﬁcant value or linearity of

the regression of the two variables is 0.14 and it is

greater than 0.05. It means that the linearity of both

regression variables does not meet the linearity crite-

ria. The b value or slope value is 4.219 and value b

contributes only about 14% to revenue. This means

that the inﬂuence of the number of followers on in-

come is low (only 14%). So that 86% is inﬂuenced

by other factors. The value of increasing students’

business income is equal to 0.011, which is very lit-

tle. This means that the increase in income in the stu-

dents’ business is only about 0.011 or around 0.1%.

This value is very insigniﬁcant to a large number of

followers on their business accounts. The value of

standard error or value of average from the data is

6.73.

The data normality test for the follower variable

results is as shown in Figure 2, where the variable

does not meet the data normality assumption. The

number of follower data is getting away from the di-

agonal line and even gathering at a certain point on

the diagonal line.

Figure 2: Gambar normalisasi data variable the number of

follower.

The absolute value of the variable the high num-

ber of followers is 0.05 when compared to the results

of the Kolmogorov normality data table with a sample

size of 31 namely 0.00, the asymptote value is smaller

than the absolute value. This shows that the data dis-

tribution is not normal, because of the value of 0.00

¡0.05, so the data is not normally distributed. This is

clearly illustrated in Figure 3. In Figure 3, there are

very abnormal data differences. There are some who

have a very large number of followers, while others

have very few followers.

Figure 3: The results of normalization of variable data are

the high number of

The results of the simple linear regression be-

ICCETIM 2019 - International Conference on Creative Economics, Tourism Information Management

182

tween the variable student business income with the

number of followers show the bias left. This means

that there is an abnormal relationship between the

two. This is seen in Figure 4.

Figure 4: The result of the simple linear regression between

Student business income variable and The High number of

follower’s variable.

The relationship of abnormalities because of the

two variables not having the same data normalization.

The variable student business income meets the as-

sumption of data normality, while the variable num-

ber of followers does not meet the assumption of data

normality.

4 DISCUSSION

Having followers between 100-300 is the character-

istic of students’ business unit at Amikom University

Yogyakarta. With an income average of about 4.17

per month, the highest income is 20 million and it be-

longs to the business running training service provider

with followers more than 500 on average. The result

got from Kolmogorov Smirnov Normality Test shows

the alpha value is 0.249, higher than 0.005. It means

that the data fulﬁl the normality assumption. In Cor-

relation Regression Test, the coefﬁcient value R of

0.14 indicates that the relationship between the high

number of Instagram followers with students’ busi-

ness income is very little. It can be concluded that

the contribution of follower’s number is not signiﬁ-

cantly, and 99.86% of the income is signiﬁcantly in-

ﬂuenced by other factors, such as: product Competi-

tors, too many competitors selling the same products

lead business owners to do market analysis on the go

product relevance to reach the market target. Product

relevance and market target are two things that can

be very useful in ﬁnding perfect market opportunities

that are potentially proﬁtable. Another important fac-

tor is analysing the platform appropriateness owing to

the fact that not every product is eligible to be offered

on Instagram. The following is a comparison of fac-

tors that inﬂuence the increase in student business in-

come, namely Instagram followers and other factors,

as illustrated in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Business income improvement factor.

In ﬁgure 5, it explains the comparison of factors

that affect the increase in income in student business

income. That is 14% is due to the number of followers

while 86% is due to other factors. Including variant

variables of product, Lack of ability to create fasci-

nating videos and pictures, and customer information

(information source).

The second is picture and Image Quality, the

picture and image quality eloquently affect product

branding on Instagram. Various insufﬁciencies of of-

fered product features create real failures of the brand-

ing process on Instagram. The pictures and images

should deliver perfect brightness, detail, and size. It

had better use pictures and images of the product

which are offered and taken from the company’s ofﬁ-

cial website (Hofacker and Belanche, 2016).

Third, Lack of ability to create fascinating videos

and pictures. Fascinating videos and pictures that are

used as commercial ads on Instagram are formidable

to seize followers’ attention to keep the products un-

der surveillance and escalate followers’ brand aware-

ness. Creating such captivating videos and pictures

will create followers’ loyalty to every post. Besides,

appropriate caption following the posted videos or

pictures is another vibrant magnet for the followers

(Kannan, PK., 2017). The fourth is Followers Trust

Declining, another essential issue is that the follow-

ers’ trust declines due to fraud, scam, and other vari-

ous types of dishonesty in online business. It results

in followers’ reluctance to buy the products. In fact,

that followers trust and loyalty mean everything to

any online business owners, business owners should

maintain their customers’ trust by keeping up their

quality of products, service, and price (Pappas, N.,

2016). the ﬁfth factor is reputation. Reputation can be

gained from previous customers’ testimonies which

The High Number of Instagram Follower Impact on Private University Student Business

183

are lucrative. Make sure that there is no fraud, as well

as keeping up the customers’ satisfaction in order to

get credence label and reputation. Furthermore, poor

company services to consumers in online businesses

greatly affect customer trust (Azemi et al., 2019).

The variable of Instagram followers and the vari-

able of students’ business income have little correla-

tion. With the slope and intercept values, we can com-

pute the variable of students’ business income, if the

business owners want to achieve their income target

for 10 million per month, they must have 2000 Insta-

gram followers or more. The limitation of this study is

the number of samples which is less various because

the number of students’ business which is considered

to be taken as samples is only 31. This research can

hopefully be a reference for business students for cre-

ating many followers by referring to things discussed

previously.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In the near future, this study will grant online busi-

ness students’ factors that should be taken into con-

sideration whenever they want to put their advertise-

ments on Instagram. This study found the number

of Instagram followers did not provide a signiﬁcant

income increase. The increase in income around 1-

5% and some even decline. This is due to several

things that really affect, such as location access, ser-

vice, and others. The signiﬁcance value of the regres-

sion between the Instagram follower’s variable with

the student business average income is 0.66, this value

greater than 0.05. It means the linearity of both vari-

ables do not meet the linearity criteria, and the linear-

ity of both of them is weak. If the improvement of

income is 10 million every month, then the number of

followers must be more than 4000 followers and must

be active in social media.

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