The MasterCard Worldwide Survey on Consumer Purchasing Priorities (MWICPP) for Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa is released twice a year. 

The MasterCard Survey on Consumer Purchasing Priorities is released twice yearly and provides valuable insights into consumers' discretionary spending priorities for the six months ahead. The latest survey was conducted from 15 March to 12 April 2010 and involved 10,502 consumers from across Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Data collection was via online, personal, telephone and Computer Aided Telephone interviews, with the questionnaire translated to the local language wherever appropriate and necessary.

The survey is designed to gauge the perceptions of people who have the experience and means of engaging in a wide spectrum of economic activities, which dictate the performance of the national economy.  Thus, the basic requirement to qualify as a respondent is that he/she owns a bank account and is between 18 to 64 years old..  These requirements provide a feasible mechanism to maximize the inclusion of people who belong to the middle and upper income groups who are most likely to have disposable income in excess of spending on necessities and play a significant role in the performance of the consumer market and the economy.

The distribution of age and sex of the middle and upper income groups in each market is taken into consideration when designing the sampling frame.  A standard minimum income is not used to qualify the respondents across all the markets covered in this survey due to difference in purchasing power parity and differing levels of income required to qualify for a credit card.  To ensure consistency and comparability with the sample in previous studies, a quota based on sex and age is applied.

Face-to-Face Interviews, Standard Telephone Interviews, and Computer Aided Telephone Interviews (CATI) were used.  Online survey was the method used for Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand; CATI was the method of data collection used for Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Kenya; Standard Telephone Interviews for South Korea and Thailand and traditional Face-to-Face Personal Interviews was used for the remaining markets.

For each market, the survey has a margin of Sampling Error of plus or minus four percentage points at the 90% Confidence Level except China and India where because of the larger sample size, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.  Similarly, because of the significantly much larger sample size for Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa, the sampling error is plus or minus 1.0% or less