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Color Lightness And Inter-Item Hierarchy: When People Associate Darker Colors With Higher Hierarchical Items, Myungjin Chung

Marketing Dissertations

While a rich collection of literature demonstrates the influence of packaging color on consumer decision making, little is known about how packaging color affects consumer behavior for bundled products. Bundled products are defined as two or more items in a single package for a special price. Often bundles consist of items with varying hierarchy: a higher-hierarchical product paired with a lower-hierarchical product (e.g., a fabric detergent and a fabric softener). I argue and show that there is a universal association between color lightness of the products’ packages and the perceived inter-item hierarchy, with darker packaging signifying a higher hierarchical product …