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

Anchoring (assuming the mechanics of cognitive embodiment) provides a rationale for
accepting that the physical nature of the payment mode influences our perceptions and thus
our behaviour towards the payment mode and how we use it. One aspect that the literature
posits and to an extent demonstrates is that the payment mode used, affects our mental
accounting faculties. The literature also assumes that the physical attributes affect how we
think and feel about parting with money. However other factors remain unknown. So one
task of this study is to explore our mental and emotional associations with payment modes-
specifically cash and card. In addition however the assumptions of Anchoring would suggest
that these associations would direct how people think about the tokens and direct how such
tokens are used. So it is proposed that:
P.3. There is link between the cognitive and emotional associations that people
have with specific payment modes and their payment mode choice?
3.6: Summary
This chapter identifies and explains the theories and concepts that direct the propositions.
Central to the thesis is the notion that the physical characteristics of the tokens used to
represent money in modern societies, influences the cognitions and emotions associated with
the token. The underlying premise is that in modern societies, the historic use of cash has
evolved associations – associations that derive from a society’s cultural values and norms and
the physical nature of the cash that are different to those associated with card or indeed other
electronic modes of payment transfers. The Chapter presents the rationale for electing to
position the study within the Framing Paradigm arguing that the tokens, as a stimulus evokes
responses that are guided by how the individual perceives the token and assumes that the
responses are directed by the frames (points of reference used, i.e., the anchors) used in the
context of such stimuli. It is further posited that the anchors are formed and reinforced by the
process of cognitive embodiment. It is also proposed that these frames affect how we
mentally account for our money and how we behave when paying for transactions.
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