Discount vs. reward: What has greater effect on altering payment behaviour

As attitudes often diverge from the actions taken, behavioural patterns are difficult to predict and starting points for behavioural change are hard to determine. Moreover, when it comes to payment decisions, being low... [ view full abstract ]

As attitudes often diverge from the actions taken, behavioural patterns are difficult to predict and starting points for behavioural change are hard to determine. Moreover, when it comes to payment decisions, being low involvement situations in most cases, people are reluctant to changes and prefer their habitualised payment method. Considering economical advantages of new payment methods, such habitualised behaviour or inertia can be disadvantageous.
Therefore, the main focus of this research is to investigate how people change their method of payment in low involvement payment settings and what influences the costumers’ adoption of new payment methods such as contactless payment. Main factors of behavioural change have been identified and a framework for behavioural change has been developed. A large-scale field study has been conducted for the purpose of evaluating different marketing interventions regarding their effect on behavioural change and the use of new payment methods.
Key findings of the study are that treatments such as sales discounts or instant rewards are perceived differently. Whereas sales discounts are likely to have a significantly positive effect on the usage of contactless credit cards, instant rewards have no effect on the usage of con-tactless credit cards but on other contactless payment means instead.