The fantastic plastic love affair Nichola Patterson
Australians have one of the highest credit card ownership rates in the world, new research reveals.
And the data, revealed in the Panorama research project by Nielsen Media Research, highlights the fact that this is one of the most competitive advertising categories in the country.
The survey focused on the Asia-Pacific region and placed total credit card advertising spend at $663m in the year to December 2005, with just over 11% ($74m) spent within Australia.
The biggest regional credit card owners were the South Koreans, driven in part by the government encouraging people to use cards as a means of payment, as well as less stringent card application criteria.
By far the biggest spender in the region was Visa International, committing close to $103m to advertising last year. MasterCard, Visa's nearest and fiercest competitor, was next on the list but spent just $51m in comparison. Banking behemoth HSBC was a very close third, spending $50.5m on credit card advertising.
However, the competition is much closer in Australia – last year, MasterCard outspent Visa by just over 20%.
ANZ was our biggest spender among the banks, shelling out $7.2m, with nearest competitors National Australia Bank and BankWest spending roughly half that. A quarter of the regional advertising expenditure on credit cards ($164m) was spent in Hong Kong, ranked fourth amongst credit card ownership.
See this week’s issue of B&T (December 1) for more on this story.
