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The Work of Building Beauty? An Analysis of Work-Related Motivations for Women Entrepreneurs in the Beauty Industry.

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Dissertation(1.37 MB)

Date

2023

Authors

Supervisor

Harris, Candice
Hurd, Fiona

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Master of Business

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

Despite being a women-oriented industry, some of the largest players in the beauty industry are led by male CEOs, with over 70% of the top-level executive roles in the industry being held by men (MBS, 2022). With the growth of women entrepreneurs in the industry, women-led beauty start-ups are creating competition with some of the most prominent longstanding beauty companies. It is therefore important to understand the motivations for women entrepreneurs creating start-ups in the beauty industry. Although there is significant research that explores the motivations of entrepreneurs, there are still substantial gaps in the understanding of the motivators of women entrepreneurs in specific industries, such as the beauty industry. The purpose of this research is to gain an understanding of the motivators related to the careers of women entrepreneurs that have entered the beauty industry. This study adopted a secondary case study methodology. Secondary data was gathered from online resources such as news and magazine articles to build the 10 case studies of woman entrepreneurs. The case studies were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) approach to thematic analysis. These were analysed by adopting the “Push” and “Pull” entrepreneurial motivation theoretical framework, to understand the motivators of the beauty entrepreneurs. The findings of this research provide insight into women entrepreneurs careers, and their unique stories that motivated them to start their ventures in the beauty industry. This was achieved through analysing the secondary data collected for the case compilation, using thematic analysis. These findings shed light on the motivators of the women, including job dissatisfaction, passion for entrepreneurship, opportunity, personal health motivations, cultural representation and major life events. Although these findings cannot determine a conclusive and wide idea of the motivations for all women who become entrepreneurs, it however, provides insight into the unique motivations that these women experience specific to the beauty industry. Half of the findings presented, align with extant entrepreneurial literature about women however, half are outside of any current women entrepreneurial literature. This creates the understanding that the findings of their motivations are more complex than what is currently presented in extant literature. Furthermore, this shows that the push and pull framework literature only provides insight into generalised motivations for women, missing personalised aspects of women entrepreneurs that lead to their motivations. This emphasizes the importance of understanding the stories of women entrepreneurs that motivated them to start their ventures. It can be concluded in the context of this study that the motivators of women entrepreneurs in the beauty industry include career dissatisfaction, passion for entrepreneurship, opportunity, personal health motivations, cultural representation and major life events.

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/16180

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Masters Dissertations