IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jouret/v89y2013i2p115-125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Men Seduced by Red? The Effect of Red Versus Black Prices on Price Perceptions

Author

Listed:
  • Puccinelli, Nancy M.
  • Chandrashekaran, Rajesh
  • Grewal, Dhruv
  • Suri, Rajneesh

Abstract

Although the use of color in promotional ads is ubiquitous in the market, little is known about the impact of color on price perception. This research reports findings from four studies that assessed the impact of red on consumers’ perceptions of savings. These studies reveal that the effect of red versus black prices on perception of savings is moderated by gender. Male consumers perceived greater savings when prices were presented in red than when presented in black (studies 1a and 1b). The effect persists in a multi-ad context (study 2). However, this effect of red abated when the level of involvement in the task was high (study 3). Women appeared to be naturally inclined toward greater elaboration of the ad and showed greater price recall. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Puccinelli, Nancy M. & Chandrashekaran, Rajesh & Grewal, Dhruv & Suri, Rajneesh, 2013. "Are Men Seduced by Red? The Effect of Red Versus Black Prices on Price Perceptions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 115-125.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:89:y:2013:i:2:p:115-125
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2013.01.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435913000031
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretai.2013.01.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell A. Hill & Robert A. Barton, 2005. "Red enhances human performance in contests," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7040), pages 293-293, May.
    2. Phillip, Marissa V. & Suri, Rajneesh, 2004. "Impact of Gender Differences on the Evaluation of Promotional Emails," Journal of Advertising Research, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(4), pages 360-368, December.
    3. Meyers-Levy, Joan & Maheswaran, Durairaj, 1991. "Exploring Differences in Males' and Females' Processing Strategies," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 18(1), pages 63-70, June.
    4. Meyers-Levy, Joan & Peracchio, Laura A, 1995. "Understanding the Effects of Color: How the Correspondence between Available and Required Resources Affects Attitudes," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(2), pages 121-138, September.
    5. Mandel, Naomi & Johnson, Eric J, 2002. "When Web Pages Influence Choice: Effects of Visual Primes on Experts and Novices," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(2), pages 235-245, September.
    6. Xinshu Zhao & John G. Lynch & Qimei Chen, 2010. "Reconsidering Baron and Kenny: Myths and Truths about Mediation Analysis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 197-206, August.
    7. Pham, Michel Tuan, 1998. "Representativeness, Relevance, and the Use of Feelings in Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 25(2), pages 144-159, September.
    8. Puccinelli, Nancy M. & Goodstein, Ronald C. & Grewal, Dhruv & Price, Robert & Raghubir, Priya & Stewart, David, 2009. "Customer Experience Management in Retailing: Understanding the Buying Process," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 15-30.
    9. Grewal, Dhruv & Marmorstein, Howard & Sharma, Arun, 1996. "Communicating Price Information through Semantic Cues: The Moderating Effects of Situation and Discount Size," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 23(2), pages 148-155, September.
    10. Meyers-Levy, Joan & Peracchio, Laura A, 1996. "Moderators of the Impact of Self-Reference on Persuasion," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(4), pages 408-423, March.
    11. Suri, Rajneesh & Monroe, Kent B, 2003. "The Effects of Time Constraints on Consumers' Judgments of Prices and Products," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(1), pages 92-104, June.
    12. Manoj Thomas & Vicki Morwitz, 2005. "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: The Left-Digit Effect in Price Cognition," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(1), pages 54-64, June.
    13. Petty, Richard E & Cacioppo, John T & Schumann, David, 1983. "Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 10(2), pages 135-146, September.
    14. Inman, J Jeffrey & McAlister, Leigh & Hoyer, Wayne D, 1990. "Promotion Signal: Proxy for a Price Cut?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(1), pages 74-81, June.
    15. Keith S. Coulter & Robin A. Coulter, 2010. "Small Sounds, Big Deals: Phonetic Symbolism Effects in Pricing," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 315-328, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kareklas, Ioannis & Muehling, Darrel D. & King, Skyler, 2019. "The effect of color and self-view priming in persuasive communications," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 33-49.
    2. Choi, Pilsik & Coulter, Keith S., 2012. "It's Not All Relative: The Effects of Mental and Physical Positioning of Comparative Prices on Absolute versus Relative Discount Assessment," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(4), pages 512-527.
    3. Saeideh Bakhshi & Eric Gilbert, 2015. "Red, Purple and Pink: The Colors of Diffusion on Pinterest," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-20, February.
    4. Orth, Ulrich R. & Malkewitz, Keven, 2012. "The Accuracy of Design-based Judgments: A Constructivist Approach," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 421-436.
    5. Santana, Shelle & Thomas, Manoj & Morwitz, Vicki G., 2020. "The Role of Numbers in the Customer Journey," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 138-154.
    6. Bhatt, Siddharth & Pai, Dinesh R. & DelVecchio, Devon, 2023. "The dark side of multiunit discounts: Multiunit discounts reduce rest of basket revenue," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    7. Shuai Yang & Xinyu Chang & Sixing Chen & Shan Lin & William T. Ross, 2022. "Does music really work? The two-stage audiovisual cross-modal correspondence effect on consumers’ shopping behavior," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 251-276, June.
    8. Grewal, Dhruv & Roggeveen, Anne L. & Lindsey-Mullikin, Joan, 2014. "The Contingent Effects of Semantic Price Cues," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 198-205.
    9. Esmark Jones, Carol L. & Barney, Christian & Farmer, Adam, 2018. "Appreciating Anonymity: An Exploration of Embarrassing Products and the Power of Blending In," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 186-202.
    10. Suwelack, Thomas & Hogreve, Jens & Hoyer, Wayne D., 2011. "Understanding Money-Back Guarantees: Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Outcomes," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(4), pages 462-478.
    11. Kukar-Kinney, Monika & Ridgway, Nancy M. & Monroe, Kent B., 2012. "The Role of Price in the Behavior and Purchase Decisions of Compulsive Buyers," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 63-71.
    12. Tibert Verhagen & Daniel Bloemers, 2018. "Exploring the cognitive and affective bases of online purchase intentions: a hierarchical test across product types," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 537-561, September.
    13. Elisa Monnot & Fanny Reniou & Béatrice Parguel, 2014. "Consumer responses to elimination of overpackaging on private label products," Working Papers halshs-01076408, HAL.
    14. Eisenbeiss, Maik & Wilken, Robert & Skiera, Bernd & Cornelissen, Markus, 2015. "What makes deal-of-the-day promotions really effective? The interplay of discount and time constraint with product type," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 387-397.
    15. Hyeong Kim & Thomas Kramer, 2006. "“Pay 80%” versus “get 20% off”: The effect of novel discount presentation on consumers’ deal perceptions," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 311-321, December.
    16. Elisa Monnot & Fanny Reniou & Béatrice Parguel, 2014. "Réponses des consommateurs à la suppression des suremballages sur les MDD," Post-Print hal-01644771, HAL.
    17. Janina SÜRKEN & Sören SUNDERMANN, 2021. ""Online Touchpoints Matter!" - An Empirical Analysis of Consumer-Brand Relationships in Retail Settings," Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 77-87, August.
    18. Jenni Sipilä & Sascha Alavi & Laura Marie Edinger-Schons & Sabrina Dörfer & Christian Schmitz, 2021. "Corporate social responsibility in luxury contexts: potential pitfalls and how to overcome them," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 280-303, March.
    19. Allison, Thomas H. & Davis, Blakley C. & Webb, Justin W. & Short, Jeremy C., 2017. "Persuasion in crowdfunding: An elaboration likelihood model of crowdfunding performance," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 707-725.
    20. Klein, Jan F. & Merfeld, Katrin & Wilhelms, Mark-Philipp & Falk, Tomas & Henkel, Sven, 2022. "Buying to share: How prosumption promotes purchases in peer-to-peer asset sharing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 171-183.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:89:y:2013:i:2:p:115-125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.