Counselling encounters between banks and entrepreneurs : a gender perspective

• Purpose – To examine how customers, both men and women entrepreneurs, perceive service quality of the latest counselling encounters with their banks, and to find out if men and women differ in their satisfaction for two or more counselling encounters.Design/methodology/approach – A combination of research methods is used. First, data have been collected through focus-groups interviews in a pilot-study; second, data have been collected through a survey study. The focus is on perceived service quality and customer satisfaction and further business, personal and situational factors are included. A total of 215 women and 487 men participated in the survey.Findings – There are few gender-related significant differences among women and men in their perceptions of service quality, and no signs which indicate that women perceive the service quality as less good. One group of women, in retail services, has perceived the service quality as being significantly different and positive compared with a group of men. Further, there are no gender-related significant differences between women and men regarding customer satisfaction. Another result is that significant differences are observed between one group of women and one group of men depending on the place where the parties met. The encounters took place more often in the women customers' office or somewhere else outside the bank.Originality/value – This paper shows that the belief that women as business owners, in general, are discriminated against by financial institutions is a myth rather than a reality.

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