NTT DOCOMO conducted a “Survey on Gold Card Ownership and Usage by All Generations” to explore changes in the ownership and usage of gold credit cards.
Despite the recent cooling down of consumption due to soaring prices, the number of “d-card GOLD” members has been increasing year by year, and exceeded 10 million on June 28, 2012. Against this backdrop, the survey was conducted based on the assumption that gold cards are no longer selected solely on the basis of social status.
When asked about their personal annual income, the most common answer was “less than 2 million yen” (39.6%), followed by “2 to 4 million yen” (23.2%) and “4 to 6 million yen” (17.2%). Gold card holders with annual personal incomes of less than 4 million yen also included many full-time housewives (househusbands) and students. On the other hand, 42.4% of the respondents with annual household incomes between ¥2 million and ¥6 million were the main volume of respondents.
When asked why they use their credit cards the most, the top response was because of the high reward rate for points and miles (48.6%), followed by because of the many attractive ways to use points and miles (42.3%). The tendency to emphasize points and rewards is evident in credit cards in general. The most common reason for getting a gold card for the first time was “because it is easy to earn points and miles (20.6%),” followed by “because the benefits are attractive for the annual fee (17.3%),” which was far ahead of “because the status is attractive (4.2%).
When asked to what extent they actively accumulate points and miles, 83.1% of Gold Card holders answered that they actively accumulate points. In terms of their awareness of points and miles, 78.8% said that they “enjoy accumulating points and miles (poikatsu)” and 78.2% said that “accumulating points and miles is one of the ways to save money”. This indicates that the act of accumulating points is not only a way to save money, but also something to look forward to.
© Source travel watch