MENTOR MATCHUP [research]

New marketing research reveals how gender impacts mentorship outcomes for female entrepreneurs in developing countries. 

There are millions of entrepreneurs in developing countries. In fact, in emerging markets, more than half of all workers — both men and women — are small-firm owners.

Many of them, unfortunately, are unable to earn a decent livelihood. And for the women, a persistent gender gap makes success even trickier.

To help improve business outcomes, governments and nonprofits each year invest billions of dollars in training programs, many of which provide mentors for entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, female entrepreneurs frequently benefit less — or don’t benefit at all — from these programs.

A new study from the University of Notre Dame recommends a simple adjustment to the current training system to give women a better shot at success. It looked into whether the gender of the mentors plays a role and found that for the men it does not, but pairing female mentors with female entrepreneurs, or gender matching, did make a significant difference.

“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Empowering Female Entrepreneurs through Female Mentors” appears in Marketing Science from lead author Frank Germann, Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Marketing. Co-authors of the study are Stephen Anderson from Texas A&M, Pradeep Chintagunta from the University of Chicago and Naufel Vilcassim from the London School of Economics. The team collaborated with Grow Movement, a nonprofit based in London.

Germann’s research interests are in the area of marketing strategy; specifically, he studies how marketing actions, marketing personnel and marketing assets influence firm performance. Recent topics have ranged from how “uptrend” messaging can promote healthy behaviors to performance brand placebos, or how brands can improve performance — research that received a fair amount of media attention, including a feature story on NPR.

The “Breaking the Glass Ceiling” paper noted that research into the gender dynamic of mentorship arrangements was sparse and often contradictory. For instance, one study suggested women benefit more from male mentors in part because they confer legitimacy upon the women, while another implied female engineering students did better with female mentors because the match enhanced the students’ feeling of belonging. Yet another study concluded there was little effect at all.

Clearly, the matter of gender in mentor relationships remained “an open empirical question,” said Germann and his co-authors — one that they set out to explore.

Their recent study’s findings are based on a field experiment the team conducted in Kampala, Uganda, with 930 entrepreneurs, 40% of whom were women. The entrepreneurs were randomly matched with a female mentor, a male mentor or no mentor. Recruited by Grow Movement and based all over the world, the mentors worked for several months remotely with the entrepreneurs through videoconferencing, phone calls, texts and shared documents.

Almost all female entrepreneurs in the study worked full time operating their businesses six-and-a-half days per week. Most sold directly to Ugandan consumers through retail and services and had one paid employee, on average. The businesses were about 4 years old, and the majority of the women were married mothers in their 20s with at least a high school education.

Two years later, the researchers did a follow-up survey. They learned that businesswomen in emerging markets benefit significantly more from having a female as opposed to a male mentor.

Why? The female mentors proved to be more positive and social in their interactions with the female entrepreneurs, suggesting they were more engaged. The study revealed a clear advantage for the women with female mentors who learned to build better customer relationships. For example, the businesswomen began to follow up post-purchase to ask about their customers’ experience and what could be improved.

“This really helped improve their firms’ performance,” Germann said. “Our findings show that firm sales and profits of female entrepreneurs guided by female mentors increased by, on average, 32% and 31% compared with the control group. And these estimates are even greater for high-aspiring female entrepreneurs.”

In contrast, compared with the control group, female entrepreneurs who were mentored by men did not significantly improve their sales and profits over the course of the study.

The study results point to a fairly simple, yet powerful, new policy tool.

“We have already shared our findings with several organizations, including some of our contacts at the World Bank who frequently design business support interventions delivered in emerging markets, many of which involve some kind of mentor,” Germann said. “We hope that female emerging market entrepreneurs will get paired with female mentors in the future, which, based on our findings, should help to break the glass ceiling and improve business outcomes.”

Before entering academia, Germann, who is also the chair of Mendoza’s Marketing Department, held industry positions with companies including Hewlett-Packard and Johnson & Johnson; academic positions with HEC Paris and McKinsey & Co.’s Datamatics team; and an external researcher role for the World Bank. He has won numerous teaching and research awards, including the AMA’s Marketing Science Institute H. Paul Root Award and the Journal of Marketing Sheth Foundation Award. He was selected as a Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar in 2017 and 2023, and he won the 2021 Varadarajan Award for Early Career Contributions to Marketing Strategy Research.

Illustration by Errata Carmona. Photo by Barbara Johnston.

Frank Germann is the Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Marketing and chair of the Marketing Department.

Published
“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Empowering Female Entrepreneurs through Female Mentors”
Marketing Science
Authors: Frank Germann (University of Notre Dame), Stephen Anderson (Texas A&M), Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago), Naufel Vilcassim (London School of Economics)