Know-How Exchange : Other

It rather depends on what product, in what market and in what context. Go back to Henry Ford, “You can have it in any colour as long as it’s black” Didn’t seem to cause him any problems though Lexus might disagree in 2006.

Please expand your question if you want a meaningful answer.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions

Color dramatically affects product sales. Each color has different meanings and emotions associated with it.

· Red—exciting, dangerous, courage
· Pink—happy, sweet
· Orange—friendly, warm, strength, endurance
· Yellow—warming, loyalty
· Brown—durable
· Blue—cool, dependable, serene, truth
· Green—refreshing, healing, youth, hope
· Purple—sensual, elegant, mysterious, royal
· Neutrals—quiet, classic
. Black--premium, elegant, morbid,

Once you define what your brand stands for, you can pick an appropriate color. You must also consider you competitors colors. This will allow you to narrow down your choices as you should try to find a color that is not owned by a strong competitor. In fact, you should try to pick the opposite if possible...Coke=red, Pepsi=blue

Complementary colors can be used to capture two different emotions such as using blue to show dependability and orange to show approachable.

Think of how great brands use color in their logos and how they make you feel. Figure out how you want your brand to make people feel and work backwards. This can be a complex process if you are going to follow a rigorous process. Let me know if you want some more details on how this branding process might work for you.

JMR

sexi_kate_14-

As many have already stated, your question is quite broad. Obviously, color can effect emotion which can in turn, effect sales.

There are numerous factors that can influence what a given color may mean to a consumer. Contextual memory is the theory that past experience with a given stimulus (here color) will dictate an individual’s emotional response. This means that any given consumer may assign a different value to a color based on past associations, both cultural and contextual.

Many brands, such as NIKE, don’t have a standard corporate color for this very reason.

Color is a powerful tool. However, its emotional imprint is based more on opinion and theory than hard science. This is not to say that opinion, and theories don’t have value, but rather that any chart which states red = X is “opinion,” not “fact”.

In choosing a color, I would suggest that you determine wether your choice enhances or diminishes your brand message.

Develop a set of test question that corresponds to your goals and objectives:

> Does the target audience associate this color with a competitor’s offering?

> Is the color unique enough to command presence within the marketplace?

> Can the color be recreated within the full gamut of brand applications? (Many colors will not translate well in certain mediums)

> Does the color have visual appeal within the given context? (Brown bananas may have less appeal than yellow bananas)

> And so on.


I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Mark Gallagher
BLACKCOFEE

Gosh, this psychobabble is funny – but I have to admit, it sells things! Just don’t ask an English Gentleman to choose the colour scheme of his clothes or his house. Not unless, that is, his family has used the same pallet for the last 500 years. Why do you think that my lot all drove around in sludge brown Bentleys for 40 years until someone pointed out that a chap called Stirling Moss had just made British Racing Green acceptable by winning the Grand Prix – and even that was the colour of my school blazer!

Don’t forget that colour only refers to the ability of a surface to reflect light of a given range of wavelengths, or it refers to the wavelengths transmitted by transparent substances. Secondary emissions such as florescence under stimulation from high energy radiation from ultraviolet, x-ray or gamma spectra should not be forgotten, and neither should stimulated emissions from particulate radiation such as alpha or beta emissions. Chernobyl Blue is very fetching but lethal.

You also need to differentiate between colours which are a product of narrow band light sources such as Sodium lights (Often mistakenly called neon lights) which have 4 bright bands in the orange and red parts of the visible spectrum, but no homogenous spectra at all. This rather re-defines the meaning of colour as any pigment which does not reflect a significant amount of light in the red or orange frequencies will appear to be brown or black. That makes choosing how a colour affects sales rather difficult because it depends on the spectrum and colour temperature of the light you use to view it! Try having a peachy complexion under a fluorescent light tube.

Modern laser devices are monochromatic, so they are truly capable of representing only one colour. Shine a helium-neon laser onto any surface which is not red and it can’t display a colour. White Light Lasers are fascinating because they depend on the imperfect capability of any pigment to actually tune out the colours they are not meant to reflect – a white laser is actually three – a red one a green one and a blue one all rolled into one source. Same goes for plasma screen TV’s, so any appreciation of colour for marketing purposes must pre suppose the question of where are you going to see it and where is the light to see it going to come from?

We also have to be very careful about discrimination. On this site we do not discriminate on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation or disability. Colour blindness is a difficult area for those who suffer from it as is the apparent inability of the marketing industry to cater for human beings and extra terrestrials who can see in infra red, ultra violet, x-ray or cosmic ray wavelengths.

The 2006 winter fashions look soooo dull if your key spectrum is 0.01 to 0.02 nanometres.

Regards


Steve

I just read an interesting book called "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell. I work in sales and we have a book club. This was the assigned book.

In it he discusses research on how color affects sales of certain products. He talks about a man named Louis Cheskin. He was convinced that people don't make a distinction between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined. When margarine first came out it wasn't widely accepted. It was his recommendation to make margarine yellow, instead of white, so it would resemble butter. Sales increased. There are a few more examples you'll find helpful as well.

I think the comments above are excellent and come from people who are very knowledgeable in this area. I'm not an expert in this arena but just want to offer this advice...go to Barnes & Noble buy a coffee and read pages 158-167 of the book. Hope it helps.

Hi kate

color makes an impact on sales, as pointed out by others in terms of packaging as well as the product.

the package color as well as the product color has to be in line with the perception of the consumers. What the consumers want, you need to have that color.

besides, the right color depends on the market as well its consumers. some examples are

# In some countries, Purple is regarded as Premium whereby in others its not.

# Pepsi had suffered a lot in South East Asia with its light blue color label as its perceived to be associated with bad luck in that part of the world.

# in many parts of globe white is the color of peace and luxury while its associated with death and widow.

hope that helps

cheers!!

Color can make or break it. How much orange lipstick would one sell? How much green Ham would fly off the shelves?

Color has a lot to do with sales.

Look into Michael Gerber's book the Emyth. He devotes a great deal of information to how color is interpreted, and which colors mean what to each sex. Yes, it does divide even alonf sexual lines. Match your colors to your target market, and its one more point IN your favor, than against you.

Darcy Moen
Custoemr Loyalty Network