General Discussion and Implications
Our studies focus on how online buyers use price and atmospheric color to form judgments about the values of offers and make purchase decisions. Many online consumers cite low price as their dominant motivation for purchasing online; consumers who patronize stores with low prices often report higher behavior intentions than those who patronize stores with high prices (Forman, Ghose, and Goldfarb 2009). The results of our first study reveal that e-retailers can use appropriate website background colors to alleviate the negative relationship between price and patronage; when price varies, consumers' patronage intentions are more stable when designers use blue or dark (i.e., low-brightness) backgrounds. In contrast, when online stores are designed with red or bright (i.e., high-brightness) backgrounds, price level may significantly influence patronage. These findings suggest that blue hues and low brightness are harmless background-color dimensions, but e-retailers who use red hues or bright backgrounds should be careful when pricing their products.
Our second study reveals that quality, monetary sacrifice, and value perceptions mediate the influence of color and price on patronage intentions. People exhibit different patronage intentions because they perceive different values from products when the background colors of online stores vary. By comparing perceived quality and sacrifice, we find that participants in blue-hue conditions perceive higher value than those in red-hue conditions if prices are high because they likely focus on the positive role of price as an indicator of quality, not on the negative role of price as an outlay of economic resources. However, when the background color of a website is red, people are more likely to focus on the role of price as a sacrifice, and their perceived value is negatively influenced by price levels. These results reveal that website background hues influence consumers' interpretations of price information.
