The relationship between consumer colour preferences and product-colour choices

Abstract

Colour is an important component of many corporate and brand-building cues and is an integral part of many design processes. A study has been carried out to explore consumer product colour choices and their relationship with consumer colour preferences in the context of personal-care products. Responses from 241 consumers from 17 countries were collected for 7 products and consumer product-colour choices were shown to be related to individual colour preferences. When presented with a choice, individuals tend to select products whose colour is similar to colours that they prefer. Some effects of gender, ethnicity and age were also explored. The authors discuss the implications for product and packaging colour design and exploitation of data mining.