How does the effect of color in marketing promotions differ across Latinos in the United States?

Color is a tool used by marketers to communicate messages about their products and brands. These messages are interpreted by consumers on a conscious and subconscious level through a process of perception. This perception is important for companies as it encourages consumers to act upon their attitudes and emotions through product evaluations, purchases, recommendations, and more. However, the process in which humans form perceptions differs for everyone as it is highly affected by learned associations like culture. With increasingly global markets and a rising intercultural United States population, it is important to understand the effect of these sensory cues and how perceptions differ across different cultures.

This study focuses on the Latino population in the US, as it is the largest and fastest growing minority segment with a purchasing power of $1.5 trillion. Specifically, it studies the interactive effect of culture and chroma, or brightness in color for this consumer group, and how that affects brand attitude, purchase intent, and ad recall. Based on extensive research and cultural premises, this study hypothesized that Latinos would have more favorable attitudes and behaviors in reaction to higher chroma ads, as compared to Americans. However, the interaction was not significant, with only the main effect of culture resulting statistically significant.

This result means that culture affected attitude and behavior such that Latinos had more favorable brand attitudes and higher purchase intent for the product after viewing the ad, regardless of chroma or hue. Additionally, the mediation effect for positive affect was significant, meaning that Latinos reacted more positively emotionally to the ad than Americans, which is what drove their more favorable attitudes and behavior. These research findings open up a lot of development areas for identifying what influenced that positive affect, to the extent of impacting their behavior—something that is really valuable for marketers to act upon.

Global Commerce Scholar