The Moderating Effect of Legitimacy and Reputation on SMEs in a B2B Environment

How to survive and grow has always been a serious problem faced by the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) on a B2B platform. A lot of researches in entrepreneurship field have proved the positive effects of entrepreneurial orientation on firms´ performance, but few researchers studied how entrepreneurial orientation influences performance. Based on the institutional theory, this paper introduces legitimacy and reputation to try to explain how competitive aggressiveness affects SMEs´ performance in a B2B environment. Based on the analysis of data from 400 SMEs on a B2B platform, several interesting findings are concluded. Competitive aggressiveness has a very significant positive influence on SMEs´ performance. It is more important to firms on a B2B platform than traditional firms. Both legitimacy and reputation plays a moderator role in this process, the better corporate legitimacy and reputation are, the stronger this influence is.