تاثیر رنگ ها بر واقعیت ها در خرید آنلاین Do Colors Change Realities in Online Shopping?

Introduction Do colors influence our daily judgments and decisions? Imagine visiting the website of an online store at which a shirt is priced at $10. Would the website’s background colors (e.g., red or blue) influence your purchase value and intention? If the price at another online store is set at $25, should the background colors of that store’s website be the same as those at the $10 store? Although some researchers have addressed the effects of colors (Bagchi and Cheema 2013; Mehta and Zhu 2009; Puccinelli et al. 2013; Puzakova et al. 2016), the psychological processes of color use have not been fully discussed. Online consumers are often sensitive to price. Because prior literature has indicated that colors significantly influence consumers’ judgments and decision, online businesses can reduce price competition by using color to create atmospheric differentiation. For example, colors influence consumers’ liking of ads (Gorn et al. 1997) and perceived brand personality (Labrecque and Milne 2012; Romaniuk and Nenycz-Thiel 2014). From a business perspective, understanding how color influences consumer judgment can help managers increase their companies’ competitive advantages and profits (Labrecque and Milne 2012). Although the role of color in marketing has been abundantly researched, authors have paid surprisingly little attention to the role of color in online environments (Labrecque, Patrick, and Milne 2013), and several knowledge gaps remain. First, price and color are critical determinants of customer behavior (Baker et al. 2002; Polo, Sese, and Verhoef 2011). Research indicates that product selection, quality, service, store atmospherics, and price relate significantly to store-patronage intentions (Pan and Zinkhan 2006). Although the impacts of color and price have been demonstrated, little is known about the impact of color on price perception (Puccinelli et al. 2013). By understanding how background colors influence consumer perceptions of price, online businesses can better align their website designs with prices. Second, color is a multidimensional construct, composed of hue, brightness, and saturation (Gorn et al. 1997). Whereas the dimension of hue (e.g., red or blue) has attracted some study (e.g., Babin, Hardesty, and Suter 2003; Bagchi and Cheema 2013), brightness has received less attention even though the background brightness of retail websites varies. For example, the background brightness of Montblanc’s online store (http://www.montblanc. com/en/home.html) is low, whereas that of The Gap’s online store is high (http://www.gap.com). Businesses can differentiate themselves by providing online shopping environments that feature appropriate atmospherics, so we explore the influences of both hue and brightness in online contexts. Third, research has shown that price has an impact on perceived value through two opposite forces: price–quality associations and price–sacrifice associations (Bornemann and Homburg 2011; Monroe 2012). In this study, we show how the background hues and brightness levels of websites influence these forces, as well as perceived value and patronage intentions. Online retailers can use our results to design their websites’ background colors to appeal to their target segments depending on whether they would target on high-quality or low-sacrifice segments