Does a Picture Paint a Thousand Words? Evidence from a Microcredit Marketing Experiment

Abstract

Female entrepreneurship is low in many
 developing economies partly because of constraints on
 women's time and mobility, which are often reinforced
 by social norms. This paper analyzes a marketing experiment
 designed to encourage women to adopt a new microcredit
 product. A brochure with the same content but two different
 covers was randomly distributed among male and female
 borrowing groups. One cover featured five businesses run by
 men, while the other showed identical businesses run by
 women. Men and women responded to psychological cues. Among
 men who were not business owners, had lower measured ability
 and whose wives were less educated, the responses to the
 female brochure were more negative, as did female business
 owners with low autonomy within the household. Women with
 relatively high levels of autonomy had a similar negative
 response to the male brochure, while there was no effect on
 female business owners with autonomy. Overall, these results
 suggest that women's response to psychological cues,
 such as positive role models, may be affected by their level
 of autonomy at home, and more intensive interventions may be
 required for more disadvantaged women.