Vera Metzen 
Point of sale credits from a consumer’s perspective [PDF ebook] 
The relationship between age and social position on perception and usage patterns of POS credits

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics – Miscellaneous, grade: 1, 4, Heidelberg International Business Academy, language: English, abstract: Being a traditional emergency credit for the poorer members of society for a long time, most people thought that POS credits were ‘unsolid’ and thus did not use it. Nowadays, this situation has changed for a variety of reasons and several authors have under-taken research on the subject in general or from a retailer’s perspective.
This piece of work focuses on the consumer’s perspective of POS credits and shows that several factors, such as age, discretionary income and social position determine a person’s perception and usage pattern of the POS credit.
In order to identify these relationships the author has undertaken primary and secon-dary research. The knowledge of authors who have previously written on the subject has been used to design a questionnaire that allows for a considerable analysis of the above mentioned relationships.
For primary research 100 anonymous people have been questioned in a shopping cen-tre in Heidelberg, Germany using an interview administered quantitative questionnaire.
Most of the results are in line with the findings of other authors. However, primary re-search shows that society as a whole still believes that a POS credit is an emergency credit and that most people’s perception of the credit is not as favourable as it is often assumed. Moreover, specific reasons for a positive or negative perception are strongly related to a person’s age rather than to social position.
Most of users of this financing tool seem to use it for acquiring non-necessary prestig-ious items. The estimated price of the item rises with the person’s age and income.
Main motives for using the credit instead of a bank loan could not be identified due to the sample’s size. However, primary research implies that using POS credits might often be subject to previous friends’ experience.