Women Entrepreneur's Start-Up Motivations and its influence on Business Growth

Women entrepreneurs despite their difference with men entrepreneurs in themselves are not a homogenous group and they differ in many characteristics and motivations. This diversity in motivations could lead to a different performance in the businesses activity. Entrepreneurial motivation is strong predictors of business success, but there is no concordance about influence of motivations on entrepreneurial performance. The objective of this study is to identify the influence of women's start-up motivations typology on business growth. This is a survey on a sample of women entrepreneurs in which 62 questionnaires were analyzed. First, the start-up motivations classified in five groups and based on literature review and nature of motivations in each group, they were named as ambitious, achievement seekers, forced, social and family entrepreneurs. Then, the chi-square test was used to identify the influence of five groups of motivations on four indicators of growth. According to the results, all five groups had experienced growth in sales, all except forced entrepreneurs had growth in market share, while only achievement seekers entrepreneurs had growth in employee and only achievement seekers and social entrepreneurs had experienced growth in product/service diversity. These results showed significant differences in start-up motivations among different groups of women entrepreneurs, differences that influence business growth, and which point out the importance of special women entrepreneurship development policy as these are related to their motivations and business growth.