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Introduction
The credit card brand (Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club) and its marketing activities indeed depict global and multicultural business orientation and is highly competitive ([63], [65] Worthington, 1998, 2005; [66] Worthington and Edwards, 2000; [29] Foscht et al. , 2010). Moreover, the dilemma of targeting viable target audiences especially the college-age Generation Y consumer cohort to credit cards has been a challenging research agenda for many years (see e.g. [5] Blair, 1997; [11] Chen and Volpe, 1998; [49] Noble et al. , 2009). In fact, the difficulties in attracting college students to banking and financial products has long been confirmed by [41], [42] Lewis (1982a, b) who found that bank advertising and promotions have little effect on students' selection criteria.
The literature reveals that spending and credit card use among college students is on the rise ([33] Hayhoe et al. , 2000; [56] Roberts and Jones, 2001). Credit card firms' interest in cultivating a relationship with college students and the importance that banking and financial institutions place on credit card brands is now well documented ([10] Cargill and Wendel, 1996). Interestingly, however, despite the nagging need to understand the motivations behind the choice for credit cards and the determination of the importance attached to credit cards by college students ([49] Noble et al. , 2009; [63], [64] Worthington, 1998, 1999), to date, the literature is silent on the key factors underpinning college students' decisions about owning credit cards. More specifically, the factors underpinning college students' selection of credit cards are unknown. In addition, the importance that college students place on credit cards is undocumented in the literature ([49] Noble et al. , 2009). To date, not a single study has systematically explored the exact nature of the dimensionality underpinning college students' selection criteria of credit card brands and the usefulness of credit cards to them. This has contributed toward credit card marketers less informed in the application of marketing and positioning strategies than they might otherwise be. These gaps in the literature are important research tasks that underscore the impetus for this research.
Despite the scrupulous debate and research activities on college students' credit card debt and credit card firms' ethical practices on college campuses ([11] Chen and Volpe, 1998; [33] Hayhoe