Gender and Cultural Effects on Consumer Colour-Purchase Decisions

Understanding the reason why consumers choose to buy products in one colour rather than another is important to retailers and designers. A relationship between individual general colour preference and product-colour choice may predict consumers’ purchase decisions. This could give a small but important advantage to the market, and help to indicate when a multi-colour product design strategy makes sense. This paper is concerned with whether a consumer’s general colour preference could influence their purchase decisions, and the relationship between them. In this study, two psychophysical experiments have been carried out (an online survey and a laboratory experiment). In both experiments, participants were presented with products (54 in total) in a range of different colours (6 colours in each product), and asked to indicate which colour product they would prefer to buy. After this, participants were asked about their personal general preferred colour. A strong relationship between consumer general colour preferences and their purchase decisions was found. Participants tended to choose products in a colour that was the same as their personal preferred colour, but it was found that the strength of this relationship varied across different product categories. The study also confirmed findings from the literature that people generally prefer cool colours to warm colours but that there were some gender and culture differences such that females and Chinese participants prefer slightly warmer hues than males and UK participants. Also, colour-performance or colour-function factors have slightly greater influence on males and Chinese participants rather than females and UK participants.