Battle of the Travel Cards: Debate-Focused Focus Groups With Holders of Premium Credit Cards

Credit Cards

Jun 30

Request

A New York–based strategy consulting firm approached Zintro with a unique qualitative recruiting challenge: uncover what drives loyalty, pride, and switching behavior among holders of premium travel credit cards. The firm sought to run a series of competitive 90-minute focus groups with 30 active cardholders split across American Express Platinum, Capital One Venture X, and Chase Sapphire Reserve. They wanted two holders of each card per group (six total per group), where participants would not only explain why they chose their card, but try to convince others to switch. They also wanted to include participants with different annual incomes ($100-200k, $200-300k, $300-400k, $400-500k, and $500k+) as well as investable assets (< $500k, $500K-1M, $1-5M, $5-10M, and $10M+).

Solution

Zintro leveraged its experience in luxury travel and affluent homeowners recruiting to identify ideal respondents. Using its existing expert pool and proprietary search tools, the Zintro team verified active card ownership and screened for card loyalty intensity. To ensure validity, participants had to pass custom-designed “trick questions” during pre-recruiting calls, which helped weed out false-positives and ensuring only genuine, passionate users joined the groups.

Results

The result was five energetic focus groups of six participants each. All 30 participants showed up on time, and the group dynamics exceeded expectations according to the client. Cardholders were deeply invested in defending their choices, citing hacks and tricks they felt added more value than the standard perks. When prompted to persuade others, the conversation revealed nuanced drivers of loyalty, perceived brand status, and emotional connection to benefits. They found that those with lower relative annual incomes ($100-200k group) tended to be more passionate and defensive about their cards than those with higher incomes ($500k+) or investable assets ($10M+) cared more about ease of use and provides services. They also found those in that same $100k-200k group spent more on average across all credit cards than those in the higher income and asset groups.