Kvinnligt entreprenörskap och signaleffekter - Kan crowdfunding-sammanhang modifiera effekterna?

Sammanfattning: Previous research has confirmed that women are believed to be less suitable entrepreneurs compared to men. The fact that advertising still frequently portrays women as inferior to men, with less competence and intellect, could be a reason for how they are perceived as entrepreneurs. Therefore this thesis aims to investigate the effects of including the entrepreneurs in advertising, and how their gender affects the receiver's perception of the product. In addition, the purpose of the study is to investigate how inclusion of the entrepreneur might empower individuals that are exposed to the ad. Furthermore, our aim is to examine whether these effects are modified in a crowdfunding scenario compared to a traditional pre purchase scenario. The hypothesized effects was tested with a quantitative experiment and by simulating different scenarios, based on the entrepreneur's gender and type of activity (crowdfunding vs. pre purchase). The results appear to be in alignment with the stated hypotheses and presented theories, yet only three out of ten are proved significant. However the results tend to point in a certain direction, which would indicate a trend that is interesting to further examine. Hence, this paper confirms that inclusion of female entrepreneurship in advertising leads to relatively lower perception of the product, but it affects the consumer's behavior in positive ways. Finally, results were also shown to be modified in a crowdfunding context, to some extent.