Colour, Contrast & Perception

When a product came out, there’re many options of marketing strategies that the marketer can use.  However, no matter how great your marketing strategy is, the point is that, the marketing strategy that mostly works is to shape your consumer’s perception, because what matters most is how the consumers see your product. As the lecturer mentions that perception is “the process by which an individual selects, organises, and interprets stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world.”, (Algie, 2014) a successful marketing strategy must get through the perception process in order to positively influence consumer decision making . It’s hard to conclude whether an advertising is successful or effective if it just passed 4 advertising evaluations (exposure, attention, interpretation and memory), because basically consumers only select and notice some advertisements which they want to see. This is called Perception Selection. Therefore, if the marketers wants more consumers to notice the product, they must stimulate consumer’s perception.

(Image from Deviant Art, http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/292606260)

(Image from WordPress, http://petraelisabeth.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/m-a-c-the-beauty-of-colours/)

(Image from Fashion Avec Passion, http://www.fashionavecpassion.com/lets-stimulate-the-economy-the-future-is-in-our-nails/dior-nail-polish/)

To my understanding, the aim of stimulating consumer’s perception is to get potential consumer’s attention, and for advertising, I think the most effective approach to stimulate consumer’s perception is to use colour contras. As Singh (2006) says that colours affect people’s emotions and females are more likely affected by colour contrast in marketing. I think this is why that many advertisements of female products use colour contrast to stimulate its audience’s perception. For example, the above advertisements all used colour contrast to attract consumer’s attention, or, in other word, they all “create contrast so that stimuli is more likely to be noticed” (pp. 3)

Although it can’t be said that colour itself provides a simply way toward effective marketing, colour indeed plays an important role in marketing advertising. (Chmielewskit, n.d) Especially for print advertising, it’s a smart choice to use colour contrast.

 

Reference:

Algie, J A 2014, ‘MARK217 Week 5 Chapter 5: Perception’, Lecture Slides, University of Wollongong, accessed 9/5/2014, https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/mod/folder/view.php?id=125315

Chmielewski, T n.d, ‘The Best Color Schemes for Marketing’, Chron, accessed 9/4/2014, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/color-schemes-marketing-1502.html

Singh, S 2006, ‘Impact of Color on Marketing’, Management Decision, vol.44, no.6, pp.783-789.

“That’s not how you drink coffee. This is how you drink coffee.”

This week, I’m focusing on the concept of the importance of undertaking marketing research. Without a doubt undertaking marketing research is essential for any companies to understand the consumer behaviour. As the textbook says, “The importance of a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour is the result of diverse, constantly changing market, and of various and economic changes.” (pp.29) Thus undertaking a good consumer research is required for any kind of business today.

 

(Starbucks Australia, http://www.starbucks.com.au/Home.php)

 

(Starbucks Singapore, http://www.starbucks.com.sg/coffeehouse.html)

Also I wanna share an example of the danger of not undertaking consumer research which directly leaded the company to a failed business in Australia. In 2008, the world-famous coffee company, Starbucks, announced to close 61 of its 84 stores in Australia. When the company was asked the reason of its failure, this American company says they were failed to understand the Australia’s “very sophisticated coffee culture”. (Emerson, D & Tibbitts, A 2008) Honestly I’m surprised that Starbucks failed its Australia market. Because Starbucks even succeed to expand its business in many Asian countries such as Japan, China and Singapore. But why Starbucks failed in Australia? I think the answer is obviously simple: this American company didn’t undertake enough marketing research about Australian consumers. Although the American culture is becoming the ‘global culture’ worldwide, when entering the Australian market, Starbucks didn’t clearly understand the behaviours of Australian consumers and other competitors. So while Starbucks already dominated the American coffee market, in Australia it simply tried to run its business in the same American way.

Now in Australia, only some Starbucks stores remain in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. So if the Australian consumers continue to dislike this ‘American coffee culture’, Starbucks might give up the whole Australian market. Like Mescall says, for the Australian market, Starbucks just simply said to Australian, “That’s not how you drink coffee. This is how you drink coffee.” (The Drum) Unfortunately, this marketing strategy didn’t work since Australia already has a rich coffee culture.

 

References

Emerson, D & Tibbitts, A 2008, “Starbucks closes 61 shops, cuts 700 jobs”, The Sydney Morning Herald, accessed on 19/3/2014, http://www.smh.com.au/business/starbucks-closes-61-shops-cuts-700-jobs-20080729-3mt1.html

Mescall, J 2008, ‘Starbucks in Australia: Where did it go wrong?’, The Drum, accessed on 19/3/2014, http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/32188.html

Schiffman, L, O’Cass, A, Paladino, A & Carlson, J 2013, Consumer Behaviour, 6^th edition, Pearson, Australia, pp.29.