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

First Pilot Group Session: Interaction and feed-back from this session resulted in session
management protocol adjustment, modifications to the work book content, clarification of
task instructions and scenario content. One task required participants to list attributes and
traits that they would associate with the bank notes and the card. They found this quite
difficult to manage and suggested that a list of attributes would be helpful for them to
describe the notes and cards. One of the tasks was to compare $20 note and $20 in a debit
card, participants thought this was unrealistic as no one would have just $20 in their debit
card and so would not be able to make meaningful associations. So the $20 stored in a debit
card removed before the second pilot study.
Rather than providing a list of traits it was decided to test the use of personality projections
based on the personification of objects. Two tests were selected - an animal and a shoe test.
The Trent and Smalley (1992) animal test was selected. Participants were presented with the
character description s of the animals (lion, otter, golden retriever and beaver) and asked to
identify which animal they related to the payment modes. The shoe test is a list of shoe
types 2 used to classify footwear. By doing so the intent was to provide participants with a
physical anchor to avoid the possibility of their voicing abstruse associations (See Exhibit
4.1).
Second Pilot Group Session: This led to a further refining of the focus group protocols-
mainly the task order. The participants were instructed to consider, if each bank note ($20,
$50 and $100) and the card was a shoe (or animal) - what it would be. They were then
instructed to describe the type of person most likely to wear such a shoe and/or the occasion
of use. A similar instruction was given for the animal test- participants, who were asked to
consider if the animal was a person - what traits they would have. The shoe test worked well
2 The use of shoes as an anchor point is selected rather that the use of animals (or alternative concrete anchors) based on two
considerations. One, is the historic role of shoes –see Russell W. Belk (2003), "Shoes and Self", in Advances in Consumer
Research Volume 30, eds. Punam Anand Keller and Dennis W. Rook, Valdosta, GA : Association for Consumer Research,
Pages: 27-33 and the Language of Shoes Project: Verbal and non-verbal reflections of the self (Lancaster University
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/andrew/shoeproj.htm. Another is the wide acceptance and knowledge of the meanings
associated with shoe in the community- see various popular articles on shoes and personality
http://ezinearticles.com/?Shoes-May-Be-a-Personality-Indicator&id=3452752, http://girlshideout.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-your-shoe-personality.html
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