Singaporean youths’ responsiveness towards credit card attributes : a conjoint and segmentation study.

Marketers in the credit card industry in Singapore are now facing a major challenge of securing a market share in the increasingly crowded market. The youth segment appeals greatly to credit card issuers because of its growth potential. However, to date, little research has been carried out to identify the specific credit card attributes to which youths are more responsive to. For example, it is not well understood how youths respond to credit card companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Furthermore, few studies have delineated the various segments of youth customers who may respond uniquely to different mixes of credit card attributes. To address these knowledge gaps, we investigated how four particular credit card attributes – the payment processor brand, the market scope of the issuing bank, the type of reward programs, and CSR initiatives – affect youth customer responses. We conducted a conjoint study to examine the responsiveness of respondents to the respective mix of credit card attributes as well as the relative importance they place on each attribute. Following that, we used cluster analysis to segment the respondents according to the importance weights placed on the respective attributes. We identified four clusters of youth customers, namely the indifferent, the brand-conscious, the socially-conscious and the reward-lovers. Our study makes a contribution by helping credit-card issuing banks and payment processors better allocate marketing resources, while tailoring their credit card offers to build and enhance customer experience for all customer segments.BUSINES