Factors Influencing Students’ Selection of Credit Cards: Some Initial Results

Although much attention has been devoted to bank choice criteria by marketing researchers (e.g. Sinkula and Lawtor, 1988; Thwaites and Vere, 1995; Ta and Har, 2000; Almossawi, 2001; Devlin, 2002; Devlin and Gerrard, 2004), the factors leading to the selection of credit cards, an important bank product (Sheppard, 1992; Worthington, 1992; Cargill and Wendel, 1996; Hayhoe et al., 2000), has received little attention from researchers (Roberts and Jones, 2001). Even though the factors leading to the selection of credit cards has been somewhat overlooked, much has been published on the concerns of college students debt, students' responsibility in the use of credit cards and ethical dimensions of students credit card use (see Roberts, 1998; Manning, 1999; Fickenscher, 1999; Warwick and Mansfield, 2000; Austin and Phillips, 2001; Palmer et al., 2001; McNamara, 2003). However, considering the interest attached to cultivating a relationship with college student target audience by credit card firms, the increasing nature of students' spending and credit card use (i.e., revolving credit, and direct link to the bank account) (Roberts and Jones, 2001), and furthermore, because of the importance placed on credit cards in banking/financial institutions' product portfolio (Worthington, 1992; Cargill and Wendel, 1996), the subject of the criteria/factors used by college students in their choices for credit cards is asserted to be an important research area in financial services marketing. Essentially, the purpose of this exploratory research is to develop a scale that measures factors influencing US college students' selection of credit cards.