Institute of Management, Christ University

Kengeri Campus,
Bangalore.
Review
On

The effect of colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood,

memorization and buying intention
Submitted for the partial fulfillment of process related to
Continuous Internal Assessment 1
In

E-Business
[MBA IV Trimester (MBA 435)]

Submitted By
P.Akhilesh

1420419

Section: M2 (Marketing)

The effect of colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood,

memorization and buying intention
Introduction:

The main aim of this research article is to study effect of the colors of e-commerce

websites on consumer mood, memorization and buying intention.

A conceptual model is proposed, showing the effects of the color of e-commerce websites
and its components, hue and brightness on the behavioral responses of the consumer,

memorization and buying intention and the responses are illustrated by mood.
Color represent an important sight stimulus for online consumers, as it is an important

website characteristic which is associated with the information displayed on the screen
Therefore color is said to be as an significant website factor which positively influence

the frequency of a consumer visiting a website and affecting online shopper responses
It always helps in recognizing important information among other and can aid
individual's memory in retaining and recalling information in many activities, including

education or purchases.
Similarly, in the online context, the color of an e-commerce website can probably
improve consumer memorization of information presented in the website

Research Problem:

There is a lack of research regarding color and its effect on memorization and buying

intention in e commerce websites

So researchers main aim is to address this gap and examine how the colors of ecommerce websites would impact the buying patterns and decisions.

Research Methodology used:

Exploratory survey based research
Research method includes both quantitative and qualitative research
Qualitative research

o The researchers had selected 21 participants as the sample size who were online
shoppers with different levels of expertise and interviewed 10 females and 11
males of which 29% of sample are subject matter experts in online.
Quantitative research
o A laboratory experiment conducted with 440 participants in order to test the
proposed hypothesis of which 296 respondents are valid and the remaining are
invalid
o An ecommerce website selling music CDs was selected for the experiment and
the website has 57 CDs in 19 categories and a blind test(Ishihara test) was

conducted to test the users color vision.

All questions in the questionnaire are framed as open ended questions closed ended

questions and using a Likert scale as format for answer options

Users were asked to view at least two CDs for getting qualified to answer the
questionnaire and a link appeared were they are asked to complete the questionnaire

with questions about memorized information, mood state and buying intention.
Participants for quantitative research are students who are mostly from design schools
and French speaking

Findings from the research:

The three components of the colors hue, brightness and saturation will affect the

memorization and consumer mood

Reading text on while, blue or green screen background end users feel that the time
passes slowly and boredom and blue increases the product value and it reduces the

purchase postponement.
The websites which promotes knowledge must display black texts in white backgrounds

with maximum contrasts

The research model had taken individual characteristics , characteristics of social

environment and situational factors

Variables used:
Memorization:
o It varies according to the colors of the website, and according to the contrast
between background and text colors
o H1: The components of colors will have an positive effect on
memorization

 Buying Intention
o This arrives from need or a desire and serves to retain customer longer time in
the website
o H2: The components of color of an e-commerce website will have a
positive effect on consumer buying intention.
Mood is an mediating variable which influences cognitive process such as evaluation,
memory and decision strategies
From the qualitative research conducted color is time saving and its binds the
relationship between consumer and website
o Ease of readability is one factor which make the consumer to buy online and
environment where the consumer is shopping is also important
From the quantitative research it was found that males account to 8% who are color
deficient which is rare in females
After running regression for hue and brightness R square accounted for 3% which is
low but sufficient where H1 can be accepted
Free recall has positive impact on buying intentions and the user can memorizes the
product easily , thus hypothesis H3 is accepted
Regression gave that negative mood has a significant and negative impact in buying
intention and it does has an significant effect on memorization
Brightness has a positive effect on buying intention, which is only significant for
chromatic colors
Little brightness suitable for stronger buying intention and too strong brightness can
also distress the consumer and limit the desire to purchase

Criticism:
o The research is not fully elaborated as the data is collected from web designers and
not from the real time online users
o There are cultural barriers and biases while selecting the respondents as the selected
students are from French therefore different culture perception of color should also be
taken
o The selected website for quantitative research is moreover only for one type of
product(online CDs) and the responses may be different for other product websites
is one gap researcher couldnt able to identify
4

o Warm and cold colors are not taken into research where only hue , brightness and
saturation are the only variables taken into consideration during conducting the
research
o Seniors also should be taken into consideration as its not only the young generation
using the internet
o Researcher did not elaborated on demographics of the user as income is one attribute
influences the purchasing decisions of the user and not mood alone
o Therefore mood alone cannot be a significant factor for purchase and memorizing of
the product in website

Reference:
Citation: APA 6th - American Psychological Association, 6th Edition, Jean-Eric Pellet, &
Papadopoulos, P. (2012). The effect of colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood,
memorization and buying intention,. European Journal of Information Systems, 21(4), 438-467.
Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1032701326?accountid=38885