Exclusive Interview: Andrew Ching on Payment Rewards and Loyalty

In this exclusive NEXTcast interview PYMNTS.com sat down with Andrew Ching, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Toronto. Andrew weighs in on loyalty and rewards programs and how they affect consumer payment choice.

Do rewards programs stimulate card use? Does carrying a balance influence the use of rewards products? It’s questions like these that drove Andrew and his team to dig to the depths loyalty and rewards programs to better understand consumer payment choice.

Listen to this exclusive NEXTcast interview to learn more about Andrew’s recent study.

Executive Bio: Andrew Ching is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.  He received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Minnesota.  He has previously taught in the Economics Department at the Ohio State University, University of California-Los Angeles, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.  With his manuscript, “A Dynamic Oligopoly Structural Model for the Prescription Drug Market after Patent Expiration,” he wins a Young Economist Award from the European Economic Association.  His research focuses on developing new empirical models and estimation methods to understand choices of consumers, firms and managers.  His research papers are published in Econometrica, Journal of Applied Econometrics, International Economic Review, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and Journal of Banking and Finance. 

Currently he is working on two projects using dynamic discrete choice models to capture agents’ forward-looking behavior.  In the first project, he uses the example of ATM cards to investigate why elderly consumers tend to be late adopters of new technology using the data from Itay.  In the second project, he measures the role of politicians’ campaign war chests in affecting their decisions to run for re-election, higher office, or leaving politics, using the data for US congressmen.