Perception In Advertising Essay Research Paper The

Perception In Advertising Essay, Research Paper

The Effects of Color in Advertising

Perception

Summer 2000

After working in the sales market for three years you begin to recognize certain things about your customers. You realize that your mood can affect their buying habits and how the attitudes can affect how you approach a prospective sale. If a person comes in showing that they have no idea about your market, you have to take the time to basically introduce them to your product. You tell them the advantages and disadvantages that your product offers. If they come in having knowledge of your product, you ask them to tell you what they already know and then correct them if there is anything they have been misinformed about. You have to make sure that what you offer for information is something they need and then move on with the sale.

Over the past few months somthing new has presented itself that at first seemed rather surprising. When our company got bought out we were given new red shirts as part of our uniform. Our old company had provided white shirts. No big deal. Our company has told us that we can wear whatever we want to work as long as it is presentable. What I have noticed is the days I wear my red shirt to work, sales seem easier to make! As I have not had the time to run a personal experiment to see if shirt color (which would be my independent variable), affects the number of sales in a given day (the dependent variable), I decided that I would look to see if color in fact can affect a persons motive to buy.

Eric Johnson, who is the .head of Research Studies for the Chicago-based Institute of Color Research. says that their research .explains that when eyes see red, the pituitary gland sends out signals that make the heart beat faster, the blood pressure increase, and the muscles tense–all physiologic changes that can lead to the consummation of a purchase (Tufts). Davis Masten of Cheskin + Masten/Image Net sat that packaging of products is done to reflect what consumers want to be, not what they really are. That is why you see elegant looking people on the front of coffee jars and not .frumpy looking Americans in bathrobes on the label (Smithsonian)

Color has shown to be a very useful tool when it comes to advertising products. Meyers-Levy + Peracchio (1995) used two experiments to determine the impact of presenting full-color, black and white, and color highlighted ad photos. They hypothesized that .when available resources better approximate those required for extensive ad scrutiny, full color ads or ads that color highlight ad photo ad photos are more persuasive than either black and white ads or ads that color highlight aspects of lower relevance to ad claims (Meyers-Levy + Peracchio 1). They showed that in certain situations that specific layouts of the advertisement would be more helpful. For example in an advertisement that has a lot of information to be processed, that the best type of advertisement would be in black and white. The reason for this is so the colors don.t interfere with the information that needs to be processed. .Color ads are likely to undermine even highly motivated consumers. product attitudes by limiting ad claim processing and substantiation (Bohle +Garcia1986; Brandt 1925; Dooley + Harkins 1970).

Some studies have shown that the impact that color plays in an advertisement depends on two key factors. These factors include the total number of colors used in the advertisement and the extent to which the ad is mentally demanding (Durrett and Stimmell 1982)

Meyers-Levy and Peracchio (1995) used two experiments to determine the effect of color on ad processing and attitudes towards products. In their first experiment they focused on how differing demands affected processing of full color and black and white ads. They used an ad for a bicycle that was laid out in four different formats. The first was black and white with all pertinent information grouped together and placed in a bulleted list. In the second format the ad was in color and had all information placed in a bulleted list. In the first and second format the bulleted lists had arrows pointing towards the respective parts that they mention. These were considered the .more resource demanding ad versions. In the third layout the important information was laid out over the whole page. This time the bullets were by themselves with an arrow pointing to the area of the bike that they were relevant to. This format was presented either in full color or black and white. These were considered less resource demanding that the first two. They hypothesized that ads with the one bulleted list would be more easily processed in the black and white format. They felt that this would result in better attitude about the product as well. Their other hypothesis was that when ads were presented in an easy to read format that opinions on products would be better in full color.

Forty-six students took part in this experiment and on a scale of 1-7 rated their motivation to be in the experiment. ([Bar X] = 5.09). The students were asked to look at the ads and later asked to recall the information in the bullets. On the tests where less cognitive energy was spent the average number of items recalled was 5.48 items out of 8. On ads where cognitive processing was more difficult, recall dropped to 4.26 items. .A main effec