Jacobs (1991)

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Implications

Country effects. Jacobs suggests that countries which use the country of their origin to market their product, would benefit from using their associated colours, as perceived by various countries. French perfume can have purple packaging when sold in the countries which associate France with that colour (the colour is also seen as expensive and/or linked to love, another contributing factor). Alternatively, firms can market their products by linking them with local colours.

Institutions. With regards to institutions, brown was the colour of restaurants for all of the candidates, and green represented schools. This suggests that perhaps restaurant owners should have a brown colour scheme in certain places, such as wooden flooring.

Packaging. The packaging of certain products is closely linked to particular colours. Green, for example, on a vegetable container, was a colour mentioned by all subjects. The US perceived a soft drink container as red (Jacobs raises the question as to whether the US sees soft drink packaging as red, because a Coca-cola bottle is so. Which one came first?), while the Chinese linked it to the colour brown, and the Japanese and Koreans saw soft drink containers as yellow.

All candidates concluded that soap packaging should be yellow (These may all be owed to the familiarity of the packaging they see. Thus, if a firm floods the market with a new colour and consistently does so, this may change the view of the people).

Jacobs wonders how permanent these colour preferences are, as Japanese cars used to be red, but now white is the preferred colour. Fashion is an issue.

General advice. When marketers introduce a product into a foreign country, they need to be aware of all the colour implications and whether the chosen hue may be perceived more negatively by the foreign market. Thus standardised marketing can be be the wrong choice.

Jacobs realises that only a few from a huge spectrum of colours and values were used in the experiment, as other colours which may have much significance may not have been tested.