Data Set: Credit Card Offer Acceptance Trends in Banking
Background: I chose this data set in order to analyze consumer behavior pertaining to personal finances. This data contains information such as consumer income level, number of credit cards, number of homes, and their bank account balances that allow one to gain insight into consumer preferences and how incentives can influence their decisions.
Goal: To evaluate the impact of reward type and income level on credit card offer acceptance to better understand consumer behavior. Having this information can allow credit card companies to identify their target market and develop the best possible value proposition to differentiate itself in the marketplace.
Methods: Using Spyder software, I produced a cross-tabulation of both income level and credit card offer acceptance, and offer type and credit card offer acceptance. I then produced a heat map of both cross-tabulations.
Results:
Observations and Analysis: The offer acceptance is very low overall. The cross-tabulations show a 5.7% acceptance rate and a 94.3% rejection rate. I was very surprised at how low the offer acceptances are. There is some variation in acceptances pertaining to reward type and income level. As for reward type, air miles results in the highest acceptance, at 2.58%. The income category ‘medium’ has the highest offer acceptance rate, at 2.61%. This indicates that air miles is the best incentive to offer consumers and that the target market is consumers with a medium income.
Recommendations: I would recommend that companies follow the marketing concept philosophy in terms of formulating their value proposition. The first step would be to invest in consumer research. This would entail market segmentation followed by target marketing. Broken into simpler terms, a company should divide the market into different segments of consumers and then decide which segments they will “go after”, or tailor their market offerings towards. The next step would be to learn what these consumers want in a credit card company, specifically what incentive is most effective, and deliver that incentive in a way that is unique and superior to that of their competitors.
Future Directions: I would be interested in further exploring the correlation between mailer types and offer acceptances. The only mailer types listed are letter and postcard. I feel that emails are a viable advertising option that is worth looking into.
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