I've been having enormous trouble understanding the thinking behind the "We are proud to only accept Visa" marketing campaign. I simply can't understand how it could be viewed positively by any consumer - it's such an obviously anti-customer thing to do.
I've been trying really hard to understand why Visa would make such an obviously unfriendly and counter-productive decision. The only theory I can come up with is that their real customers are the banks, and this is their way of saying to them "We're so completely ruthless that you're better off doing deals with us than anyone else". Seems a bit far-fetched though.
> I simply can't understand how it could be viewed positively by any consumer
Visa's market research suggests a significant increase in Visa usage and Visa brand value among consumers aware of their Olympic sponsorship (which has been ongoing since 1986, and already committed through the next 4 Olympics games):
> According to the U.S. Sponsorship Tracker, a Visa commissioned study following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games conducted by Performance Research, an independent research company, Visa cardholders
who were aware of Visa’s Olympic Games sponsorship claimed a 16 percent and nine percent increase in Visa card usage in Canada and the US respectively. The same report found Visa’s brand equity was 32 percent and 38 percent higher among consumers who were aware of Visa’s sponsorship in Canada
and the US respectively.
>According to the U.S. Sponsorship Tracker, a Visa commissioned study following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games conducted by Performance Research
When a company is paying for research about its own decisions, the research always comes back that the decision was wonderful, or that research firm doesn't get hired again.
This is the key part. Research funded by biased parties can produce valid research and results. There is the case of the physicist that was skeptical of global warming that was funded by the Koch brothers to study global warming. As a scientist, at a well known college for physics, he was skeptical but not blinded by money/politics. His research changed is mind completely.
But, like you said, he won't be hired again by two brothers that are wealthily through oil.
Wouldn't they just be able to look at their own records to see any trends (or lack thereof)? Presumably Visa is investing multi-millions of dollars of into this, surely they expect to see a return on that investment. If the fail to see that return, surely they would stop. They haven't stopped. I'm thinking that the research firm was probably right.
I doubt it was one person who decided, negotiated and implemented the sponsoring of this campaign. So what is your point? Does it really seem reasonable to you that no one would notice how entirely unprofitable (hypothetically) the investment is? Over the course of a dozen+ years!?
It could quite easily be one high-ranking manager who decided and pushed through such a campaign, and now uses company money to pay for research that "proves" its success and enables him to brush off those who doubt it but lack similar clout.
This kind of thing is par of the course for company politics. But probably unlikely to persist this long.
Just depends on whether or not the results are meant to public consumption. I find it hard that no one at Visa would want an honest study from time to time, but I can also easily believe that sometimes studies are commissioned with the end-goal being to justify an already set-in-store decision.
He wasn't asking 'why sponsor the olympics', he was asking 'why take the exclusive angle'. Saying 'they've been doing it for years' does not answer that.
Funny but not very enlightening. This isn't a case of generations of companies still following the same pointless habits (wearing suits and ties, etc). If those monkeys were responsible for monitoring a return on a 700 million dollar investment, I think that one of monkeys would try to investigate the situation further. Also, I think science suggests humans are smarter than monkeys [citation needed].
A lot of us in Vancouver really resented the "only accepts Visa" thing. It was particularly aggravating in Canada where most people pay with a bank debit card, not Visa or Mastercard.
That said, it's not surprising that the overall effect of the sponsorship was positive since refusing MasterCard and debit was only one small aspect of Visa's campaign. Reading about this again in London made me all riled up again, but Morgan Freeman's soothing voice will likely undo the damage soon enough.
In Canada, debit cards are run by a not-for-profit venture founded by the major banks called Interac. Everybody's standard ATM bank card is usable as a debit card. This is the most common method of payment in the country.
I think you are misleaded by the branding on your debit card. Most transactions are not going through Visa, but a third-party solution that the banks them selves run. I might be wrong, but I think Nets delivers the solution in most of northern Europe. They call it NetAxept.
This is a direct pay solution used with online terminals, the Visa/MasterCard-part of your debit card is just for offline transactions or credit.
There are quite a few different payment processors here (Nets, PayEx, BABS, Dibs...), not really sure about how the backend works between banks. My card works in anything with a Visa logo, but there's no credit connected to it.
I don't get it. NetAxept appears to be some kind of payment processor for web shops; certainly not something a bank would use for its internal processing.
It would be the height of stupidity for Mastercard and Visa to allow banks to issue cards with their labels and then have these cards be part of some secret "strictly Northern Europe" Mastercard/Visa network. Talk about confusing the customers.
But this is all moot: I have both Mastercard and Visa debit cards issued in Sweden. They work perfectly well outside of Europe...
In Finland the banks recently dismantled the old debit card system and forced everyone onto the insecure (EMV based) and expensive Visa/MasterCard branded debit cards. You still sometimes
see the old cards but banks have stopped issuing new ones.
I'm sure people appreciate VISA's Olympic sponsorship, there is little question about this.
Exclusive sponsorship if different from limiting the choices of vendors and customers.
People do not like being limited in their choices, I do not think that benefited them.
> Visa's market research suggests a significant increase in Visa usage and Visa brand value among consumers aware of their Olympic sponsorship.
Couldn't this be that heavy-Visa users notice the company's sponsorship and usage more generally? This doesn't really prove that Olympics sponsorship increases usage.
> The same report found Visa’s brand equity was higher among consumers who were aware of Visa’s sponsorship.
Again, couldn't it just be that the kinds of people who notice that Visa sponsors things are the kinds of people who already like Visa? This doesn't establish that sponsoring the Olympics helps Visa.
"Again, couldn't it just be that the kinds of people who notice that Visa sponsors things are the kinds of people who already like Visa?"
Could be, but it's highly unlikely that a company who does surveys as its core business doesn't know this and tries to control for it, or at least explain it in they methodology section of the report they deliver.
I'm not sure I even understand what is being reported. I have little doubt that the opposite could be demonstrated with equally valid numbers. And did they also survey for spectator displeasure?
If spectator displeasure was a problem on the scale Visa could care about, then brand equity among those surveyed would have gone down instead of up. Why would they care to survey that directly? What matters is whether the sponsorship is a net gain for the Visa brand or not. The research says it is, big time.
Consumers learn something crucial from this marketing campaign: that American Express and certain other credit cards are NOT accepted by some merchants, so it's a good idea to get and always carry a Visa card -- by implication, the only card accepted everywhere.
In a rural town in the UK I tried to get some money of my Mastercard on a Visa-branded machine. Didn't work. A friend tried with a Visa card and that worked like a charm. It sounds more like a common practice in the UK.
Denmark had something similar with Visa as well. Apparently it works since I am now very likely to get a Visa-card next to my Mastercard for those just-in-case situations.
That story makes no sense. We don't have "visa branded" cash machines. They're all run by third party merchants and they universally support something called LINK which allows all the major card vendors to hook in.
I'm sure your card failed to work but I doubt it had anything to do with a big Visa logo on the machine.
Were you traveling to the UK? If so, then your card's fraud department probably just declined the card. They're super picky these days, you really need to call the card company now before you travel internationally.
If you ever had AmEx (I do) you already know that, a lot of places in US and more in Europe do not accept AmEx. When I go to some place I don't know I usually take AmEx, Visa and Mastercard - one of each. It can be very useful in all kinds of weird situations - like when I had some ticketing machine in Europe that was sure every Visa has a chip and a PIN code (American ones of course do not) - but it gladly accepted AmEx without any codes. So variety helps :)
So, I'd say it indeed may be a good idea to have a Visa card - along with their competitor's cards.
I find that "the only card accepted everywhere" very amusing :) I spent 5 days in Berlin recently and I found lots of places that either were "cash only" or they only accepted "Maestro" cards.
I had two Visa cards that I couldn't use, so frustrating.
In socialist Europe, banks own YOU! :-). But seriously, the banks screw with their customers so much over here that this is just another bump on the road.
To me, "proud to only accept Visa" sounds like "F@#k you MasterCard and your users, too"...
'In Free Market America, banks own YOU!' would be more appropriate.
But wrong. Or at least 'they own the unwary and dumb'.
I bank with a credit union, got rid of my credit cards in favor of debit, and working real hard to pay down my debt. Already I've bought two vehicles for cash.
Now, granted, they were not _great_ vehicles, but they run and they're paid for. Looking forward to paying _cash_ for a really _nice_ (but used) car in a decade.
Why get rid of your credit cards? As long as you pay the balances in full every month, a modest selection of credit cards can easily lower your expenses by 3%, if not more. You can also accumulate a fair bit of free spending by trading out old cards for new ones with signing bonuses. Think of it like a free, untaxed $3-4,000 bump in salary.
Why get rid of your credit cards? As long as you pay the balances in full every month, a modest selection of credit cards can easily lower your expenses by 3%, if not more.
Why did I?
Because it was too easy to use credit, not pay the balance in full. The debt built up. Things got out of hand.
And because I really did not like dealing with the credit card folk, even when I was in their good graces. Too much complexity.
hm. Interesting argument against the 'cash back' cards.
The context I've heard of people getting in trouble with this is when they used the card for business purchases and then used the discounts for personal purchases.
[edit] I assumed you were based in america, but apparently you are in sydney, sorry for confusion and random assumptioness. However, this means that according to the first chart on the page I linked, you guys are doing worse than the americans on household debt. Not that I can point fingers from the uk, cos we are either screwed or up to something fiendishly smart. But if it is the latter, I have no idea what it is.
Reading that my first thought was "Wow, British banks are screwed."
It would be interesting to see how that compares to Greece, Spain, Italy, and other more troubled EU countries. The EU situation suddenly seems a lot scarier to me financially.
I should add that Steve Keen's writings on debt are absolutely must-reads for anyone interested in macroeconomic outlooks especially because he discards Neoclassical models in favor of debt-based models.
Is probably research. First test what happens when you have exclusive payment areas for a limited time and see if anyone kicks off really badly and if the fallout from doing so costs more money than what you make. If not, roll out to more events to try and establish a new standard practice, while keeping a very close eye on social indicators and the bottom line.
Since Visa's been doing this since 1986, that's an awfully long test. They do quantify the results, though:
> According to the U.S. Sponsorship Tracker, a Visa commissioned study following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games conducted by Performance Research, an independent research company, Visa cardholders
who were aware of Visa’s Olympic Games sponsorship claimed a 16 percent and nine percent increase in Visa card usage in Canada and the US respectively. The same report found Visa’s brand equity was 32 percent and 38 percent higher among consumers who were aware of Visa’s sponsorship in Canada
and the US respectively.
OK. Fair enough. They haven't just miraculously turned into complete bastards on this, they were just complete bastards all along and the press happens to be making a fuss about it at the moment, just cos it is news with the word 'olympics' in it.
Just because consumers accepted something in the past does not mean they will accept it in the future.
For example, in the past when I found a flashy new b2b service I would grumble when I couldn't find a price list and continue my research. Now, when I visit a company's page and there are no listed prices, I immediately close the tab and forget about it.
Saying "We only accept Visa" is like saying "We only serve white people." Exclusive, yes. A reminder of ethnic and class privilege, yes. Desirable by any progressively minded individuals? Absolutely not.
A note about online payments when it comes to credit cards, I pretty much stopped using my Mastercards with the exception of Amazon because of that damn Securecode implementation. I think payment processors and providers who erect any restrictions or barriers will find them self quickly suffocated out by services who are going the other direction. (I'm one of the guys who believes within the next 5 years you'll just be able to walk out of most stores with a product and seamlessly be billed for it, uber style.)
I've been trying really hard to understand why Visa would make such an obviously unfriendly and counter-productive decision. The only theory I can come up with is that their real customers are the banks, and this is their way of saying to them "We're so completely ruthless that you're better off doing deals with us than anyone else". Seems a bit far-fetched though.