Rural Women Entrepreneurs in Malaysia: What Drives Their Success?

Abstract

This paper examine the entrepreneurial characteristics (risk taking, ability to explore, confidence and determination, willingness and initiative, vision, creativity and innovation, social networking and strategic thinking) that influence the success of rural women entrepreneur in business. The questionnaire is used as a data collection method that involves a total of 80 rural women entrepreneurs in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. Data collected were analysed using SPSS version 20 and SmartPLS 2.0. Findings from the Partial Least Squares analysis revealed that confidence and determination and vision are the main variables that influence business success of women entrepreneur in rural setting environment. In this regard, it is hoped that the findings of this study can help the parties concerned in the design and implementation of the agenda to stimulate the performance of this entrepreneurs to a higher level. It turns out this effort can contributes towards the development and transformation of the economy to achieve developed nation status and a high income by 2020. Implications, limitations as well as suggestions for future research are accordingly discussed in this paper.