Cash or Card: Consumer Perceptions of Payment Modes - Scholarly ...

To date, the majority of the studies use data obtained through laboratory experiments and
panel data (primarily supermarket/grocery purchasing). Situations such as buying tickets for
movies, fast-food and restaurant based purchases, clothes and other personal items also need
to be examined and done so in a natural as opposed to laboratory setting.
Future research should consider the innovative use of mobile devices to purchase goods and
services. For instance, a contactless and rechargeable smart card allows people to pay bus
fare, buy snacks and pay for parking tickets. In Japan consumers can purchase goods from
vending machine simply dialling a number on their mobile and the bill is charged on their
phone bill. The use of mobile phone to pay for purchase is inevitable. As mobile payment
presents convenience to consumers, it also results in perceptual distancing between payment
and consumption. It is necessary to ascertain people’s perception of mobile payment, their
use and associated behaviour.
The payment mode perception scale is a potentially valuable tool and so its further
development is necessary. For it to be viable external validity needs to be established. This
entails testing across socio-economic groups, gender and sub-cultural groups and of course
cross cultural validation.
Thaler suggest mental accounting of cost and benefit is subject to fallacies and cognitive
biases. For this study, the focus is on the representations of money i.e. the tokens used to
facilitate the exchange- in this instance cash and a debit card. The intent of this study was not
to address fallacies though pursuing them would be a useful area of research. For example,
would the type of token used affect the gamblers fallacy in casinos- chips play with and
online gambling uses cards both tokens obscure awareness of value in a transaction.
Final Note
It is sensible to assume that a cashless society will prevail. This being so, though the findings
are particular to a specific population, given the study findings, money management and
spending awareness may be an issue for many people. At least in the transition stages and so
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