E-Commerce

Consumer Responses to Colors of E-Commerce Websites: An Empirical Investigation 117and on intentions. According to them, sites promoting knowledge transfer must displayblack texts on white backgrounds, achromatic colors with maximum contrast. In parallel, e-commerce websites should merely use chromatic colors due to the higher aestheticappreciation score which is correlated with higher purchase intention. Blue is the favoritehue when it comes to buying intention. These results underline the importance of takinginto consideration the impact of the color’s components (hue, brightness and saturation), aswell as the contrasts occasioned by the foreground and background colors.Moss et al. (2006) demonstrated that the impact of colors varied according to gender.According to them, differentiation mechanisms have an impact on how an e-commercewebsite is perceived, not based on price but based on website ease-of-use and the pleasurefelt by users.3. Research modelThe model explains how the colors of an e-commerce website and their components - hue,brightness and saturation - can have an impact on the buyer’s affective state of emotions andmood and cognitive states of memorization and buying intention (Figure 1).Fig. 1. Conceptual model of the research3.1 MemorizationMemorization is a very important factor for the large number of information-based websitesthat currently exist. It is important for e-learning applications, since the user goal is usuallyto retain the information beyond the time the page is being read. This also applies toinformation included in e-commerce websites, since consumer tasks are often facilitated bymemorizing information while navigating. Drawing on offline setting, memorization can beinfluenced by the colors of an e-commerce website.In order to understand the effects of color on consumer memorization we have to take intoaccount the quality and quantity of information a consumer has memorized while visitingan e-commerce website. We posit that memorization varies according to the colors of thewebsite, and especially according to the contrast between the dominant and dynamic colors,in agreement with the work of Hall & Hanna (2004).