Almost 87 per cent of the people quizzed by Synovate, a global market research company, say they prefer to dip into their savings pool to meet their festival-related expenses.
Only 4 per cent of the respondents did take personal loans in the last one year for festivities. Otherwise, nearly 6 per cent chose to liquidate their fixed deposits and 2 per cent of those polled borrow from friends.
Synovate conducted a quantitative study to understand consumer attitudes and perceptions of certain financial services and service providers.
All interviews were conducted telephonically in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. The study involved 600 male/female respondents from SEC A and B households in the age-group of 25-50 years.
Overall, of those polled, only 14 per cent take personal loans. It appears that instead of festivals, people prefer to take
personal loans predominantly for either home renovation or business. And of those who do take loans -- 91 per cent are from banks and financial institutions.
Interestingly, still, only 23 per cent say they'll take a personal loan over the next year. The biggest deterrent, understandably, is high interest rates.
And yes, people do have definite views on credit cards as well.
Awareness of "lifetime free credit cards" is higher among credit card owners than non-owners. Overall, only 27 per cent of those polled would like to subscribe to such a card.
Better still, only 59 per cent of existing credit card owners in the polled group intend to go in for a free card, while 79 per cent of non-owners aspire to a free card. People, it would seem, do aspire to free lunches -- they just worry about the invisible strings attached in such deals.
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