Differing gender perception towards image of financial organizations: Evidence from Iceland

Research shows that females tend to be more responsible towards social issues than males. This paper researches whether such a tendency can be found when measuring the image of banks and savings & loans. Thus, the research objective is to measure whether the male and female perception of the image of financial institutions diverges. The findings are based on two surveys, both conducted in February 2014. Both surveys were sent to a convenience sample consisting of Icelandic university students, on the one hand, and the general public on the other. The former survey has been administered every year since 2003. Whilst analysing the data, no statistical difference could be found between responses from the two surveys. They were therefore merged into one set of data consisting of 514 responses in total. Respondents were asked to select between ten image attributes on a nine-point scale where 1 represents “Does not at all apply to this brand” and 9 represents “Does apply very well to this brand”. The brands researched were those of all major banks and savings & loans at the time of the research. The paper concludes that the perception of image is gender specific as a difference was identified towards the banking sector as a whole and towards diverse banks researched. Generally, women seem to judge banks harder than men and among them banks have a stronger connection with the negative image attribute of corruption.