MasterCard’s online share gets a boost from a travel give-away
Credit card companies are taking their battle for market share to the web with promotions and innovative deals with online marketers, including give-aways for customers. MasterCard International, for instance, has nearly doubled its market share in a promotion that started in February and runs through the end of the year at travel site Travelocity.com.
As part of an aggressive campaign by MasterCard to work with online travel sites to promote its card brand, MasterCard and Travelocity are jointly sponsoring a promotion during which customers who book a cruise on Travelocity and pay for it using a MasterCard receive a free stored-value card worth $50 to $250, depending on the price of the cruise purchased.
While neither side will reveal how much each partner pays for the promotion, executives say the costs are shared. And each claims it gets a lot of incremental business because of the promotion. “Our market share on cruises booked by Travelocity during the (first) six-week period of the promotion was 72%,” about double MasterCard’s normal market share, Elizabeth Ward, MasterCard’s vice president of travel and entertainment industries, tells Internet Retailer.
The stored-value card offered is branded by MasterCard and can be used to make purchases anywhere that accepts MasterCard. Yet, because the card is promoted as a way to pay for purchases on the ship and at port during the cruise, many consumers use the card to cover those expenses. “We do not track usage, but our experience is that consumers will typically use the card at the places where you subtly hint they should use it,” Ward says.
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