In the last 2~3years, the credit card industry has shown amazing growth and market expansion. It has displaced cash and checks, it has captured a growing share of consumer spending, and it has become the $2^nd$ largest payment method following cash. Also the credit card issuing rate has increased greatly. Currently it is reported that people who are doing economic activities carry an average of 4.6 credit cards. This statistic implies that credit card industry is almost saturated, and competition is severe.
Now, card issuers‘ main concern is not just attracting new customers but also making their credit card be the main card of cardholder. In other words, card issuers want to ensure that their card is the one that is continuously and most frequently used among all credit cards belonging to cardholder. To reflect this, issuers competitively add more features and services to encourage usage of their card.
But consumers are not the same. They may respond differently to individual feature and evaluate the same product differently. So, the companies need to know how different consumers react to offers of various card products. It is important to understand which factors affect consumers? choice for credit card usage. This paper analyzes credit card based on 2 types of factors. One is related to product itself ? product features, and the other is related to consumers- demographics and lifestyle.
In this thesis, I attempted to which factors critically affect consumers? card choice and usage, and how differently consumers evaluate these factors based on their individual lifestyle. The result of this study will help credit card issuers to develop and design new products, and plan and implement a targeted marketing program.
