What we know about consumers’ color choices

Marketing practitioners know that a product’s color may play an important role in a consumer’s purchase decision, but may not be familiar with the empirical research that has been conducted in this area. The purpose of this paper is to apply an associative learning framework to the color literature to help understand consumer color choices. Specifically, the principles of classical conditioning, a form of associative learning, will be used to make suggestions to practitioners who wish to create or change color associations for their products. The implications of the findings from the color literature are discussed.