The meaning of colors in marketing

Colour is an integral part of products, services, packaging, logos, and other collateral and can be an effective means of creating and sustaining brand and corporate images in customers' minds. Through eleven countries -- eleven different cultures from South, North, Central and Eastern Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, the study explores subjects' preferences for different colours (indicating the favourite one) as well as various colour combinations. Moreover, it investigates the meaning associations with an assortment of nine colours -- white, yellow, orange, red, blue, green, purple, brown and black. The results show cross-cultural patterns of both similarity and dissimilarity in colour preferences and colour meaning associations. The search for a "universally attractive" colour and colour combination point out to the colour blue and the blue-white colour combination that replicates the "blue phenomenon". However, it is suggested that every single colour communicates very unique messages that need to be understood in the first place before using the colour for any kind of marketing communication. The circumstantial findings imply that age and globalisation influence significantly the investigated topic of colour meanings and preferences.