Color psychology for food: What is Color psychology, business, packaging, Industry, Fast food, Marketing, Advertising, In restaurants, Hungry.
Introduction
Did you know that the color of an item plays an important role in capturing the attention of the consumer? If your product is brightly-colored, the chances are high that consumers would want to know more about it. Such a product would be the first thing they spot when they enter a store.
If the color is not too bright, the consumer might need to hear about the product or require it for them to go looking for it in the store. Such means that color is very important in marketing and needs to be among the top priority factors to consider. Color is even more important when it comes to feeding stuff. It is considered an intrinsic cue that motivates the consumer into buying a particular food item.
It has been proven that changing the intensity or hue saturation of the color of food can have a dramatic impact on consumer behavior. In some cases, such changes can reduce the number of people willing to purchase the food item.
In other cases, the changes can increase the customer base thus enhancing the organization’s profit maximization. Therefore, if you plan on selling beverages or foods, it is important to focus on the impact of color on your consumers.
Such a decision can determine whether your business will succeed or not. Let’s explore some of the things you need to know regarding color psychology to facilitate effective marketing.
What is Color psychology
Color psychology refers to the study of colors as one of the main determinants of consumer behavior. Carl Jung is one of the individuals well-known for studying this field of psychology. The psychologist explores the meaning and function of color in people’s lives.
According to color psychology, color creates perceptions that are not real. The perceptions only exist as long as the particular item has a specific color. If the color of such an item is changed, the perception that people have regarding the item would also change.
Color is known to have different qualities that can evoke different emotions in people. Advertisers take advantage of such colors to evoke a feeling that would compel an individual to buy their products. In such a case, the colors are known to enhance placebo effectiveness.
Given that people have different perceptions and interpretations of different colors, it might be challenging to only use color in advertising. The advertiser has to combine other factors with color to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisement. The meaning of a color can also be defined by the context.
Therefore, if a context is made to stimulate the customer, the associated color would automatically mean stimulation regardless of how the customer used to perceive the same color in the past. According to color psychology, color exerts its meaning automatically and this poses a great benefit to advertisers in the food sector.
Business
The use of color in businesses plays an important role in creating a brand. Color has a better impression on people than a text. For instance, people are more likely to remember the color of a particular building better than its name. such means that businesses utilize color in the creation of strong brands.
Once a business has identified a color, it is challenging to change it because it will definitely affect the market share. The consumers would be looking for a particular color yet the business is already using a different color. An example of how color has been used in creating brands is the red used in McDonalds. When a person is looking for a McDonald restaurant in the city, they can easily locate the building by looking at the color instead of the name McDonalds.
Businesses have to identify a color which makes them stand out. In most cases, bright colors such as red, orange and yellow are the most preferred by businesses. These colors evoke confidence and make the business conspicuous. Such means that the color would play an important role in enhancing the business’s market share, thus creating a strong brand. If you plan on starting a business, it is advisable to identify a specific color that would represent your business in the market.
Packaging
Packaging plays an important role in passing a positive message about a product. The packaging can also pass a negative message about a product or firm if it is not done well. Many firms focus on color in packaging their items as a way of marketing their products.
Bright colors are highly conspicuous and this means they appear attractive to the customer. For instance, if an individual is seeking to buy cupcakes, they are most likely to choose those packaged in colorful boxes. The color in the package boxes is considered a sign of the taste of the item being sold.
Therefore, if the color is not attractive enough, many people might not be compelled to buy the product. Such people would attach the appearance of the packaging to the product’s taste.
Packaging is one of the main factors that firms should focus on when developing a product idea. The product might be great but the manner in which it is presented to the customer is what determines whether the customer would buy it or not.
Therefore, you have to ensure that your product is packaged in a unique way which distinguishes it from other products in the market. As a result, you will be amazed by the large number of clients that prefer to buy your products instead of those of your competitors. If you do not invest in packaging by using the right colors, you are lagging behind in the highly competitive market for foodstuffs.
Industry
The industry for food stuffs is highly competitive and the sellers in this industry have to focus on remaining unique. It is such uniqueness that plays an important role in enlarging the market share. If your business in the food industry does not present uniqueness to the customer, the chances are high that the customers would prefer buying your items from the competitor presenting them with uniqueness.
One of the main ways to remain unique in the industry for foodstuffs is by using color wisely. The food industry is one of the well-known industries that incorporate color in their products to appeal to consumers. Therefore, the choice of color will determine whether you will get customers or not.
If you choose your colors poorly, the chances are high that you will have challenges increasing your market share. If you choose the right colors to appeal to the consumer, you will not have to implement much effort in marketing your products because the color will market your products on your behalf.
Businesses in the food industry have been using color to create uniqueness and advertise their food stiffs. Orange, red and yellow are the most commonly used colors in advertising products in the food industry. When used on foods, these colors evoke the urge to eat and therefore, the consumer is likely to buy the food items.
Fast food
Given that many people have busy schedules, the business for fast foods has been blooming. This means that people in this business face a lot of competition. As a result, they have to invest in the factors that make them unique. Among such factors is color because it plays an important role in creating a unique brand.
An example is the case of McDonald. This fast-food restaurant has established the use of color red, in combination with other graphics to create a strong brand. The same case applies to KFC. KFC uses the color red and in combination with other graphic designs to create uniqueness in the market for fast foods.
When an individual is seeking to visit both restaurants, they only need to look out for the fast-food joints painted the color red as well as the unique logos for each fast-food joint.
Imagine a situation where a fast-food joint did not have a unique color to represent its brand. In such a case, you would find that one fast food joint is painted red while the same joint in another street is painted green. Such a case is confusing for consumers and it would play an essential role in reducing the market share.
Therefore, a unique color for a fast-food joint makes it easy for people to spot it in the streets. Such would compel many people to eat in the fast-food joint even though they had not planned to eat there. Therefore, if you plan to start a fast-food joint in the highly competitive market, you need to identify a way of being unique to attract more customers.
Marketing
Marketing is among the most important factors in any type of business. Without marketing it would be challenging for the business to grow in terms of attracting a huge market share. Every firm ought to come up with a marketing strategy to ensure that it beats the market competition and that the advertisement reaches as many people as possible.
Thanks to technology, marketing can easily be done in a manner that enables the advertisement to reach the target clients. If an advertisement reaches the wrong audience, it would not be beneficial to a firm. The type of marketing carried out by organizations vary from one organization to another. Hence, it is important for you to identify the kind of marketing that works best for your firm.
Color plays an important role in marketing because it enables consumers to remember your firm easily. For instance, if an advertisement being aired on the television has bright colors, the chances are high that many people would watch it. If the advertisement does not have bright colors, it might pass unnoticed.
Therefore, in your marketing strategy, you need to identify colors that present your business effectively. Bright colors such as red, orange, yellow, neon green and bright shades of blue are known to attract an individual’s attention. Hence, these colors would be ideal for use in your advertisements.
Dull colors such as black, dark shades of blue, and dark shades of green might not attract the intended attention especially in the food industry. If you are advertising your business, you will need colorful pictures of foods to attract attention. The pictures will leave your audience wishing to test the foods. In such a case, you will find it less challenging to create a huge customer base.
Advertising
Advertising also plays an important role in increasing an organization’s market share. Color is a key aspect in advertising because it determines the number of people that the advert would reach. As mentioned earlier, people have different perceptions about color. Such perceptions are in turn, transferred in the decision-making process about buying the particular item.
If a person has a positive view about the color used in advertising the particular item, the chances are high that they will buy the item. If the person has a negative perspective, they are less likely to purchase the particular item. Therefore, as an advertiser, it is important to consider the perception that your target audience are likely to have concerning certain colors. Such information would make it easy for you to choose the colors that most likely to sell your food items.
The choice of color for an advertisement would depend on the type of foodstuffs you wish to sell. For instance, yellow, orange and red are mostly used in advertising fresh foods. Other colors can be ideal in advertising packaged foods.
Hence, the color chosen would depend on the type of food items that a person wishes to advertise. For instance, biscuit companies tend to use different colors in advertising the packaging of their products. One company might choose purple while another company might choose orange. These colors are made to attract potential consumers into buying the particular product.
In restaurants
The competition among restaurants tends to be high because most of the restaurants sell similar foods. For instance, a restaurant selling Mexican food in the US might face a lot of competition from other restaurants selling the same food.
This means that every restaurant selling such food has to come up with a unique strategy of enlarging its market share. The most common strategy is offering quality services and providing tasty food. The appearance of food determines whether a customer would buy it or not. For example, if the food has appetizing colors such as yellow and orange, many people are likely to buy it.
Food that does not have appetizing colors such as white food is less likely to be bought because consumers do not consider it to be an appetizing food. According to color psychology, many people associate the taste of food to its color.
This means that restaurants have to make their foods appealing to the eye to attract many people into buying the food. Once a restaurant has normalized the sale of appealing food, it will stand at a better position in the competitive edge.
If the restaurant does not sell appetizing food, it is likely to have a few customers and this will place it at a very poor position in the competitive edge. Such a restaurant has high chances of failure in the future due to the lack of enough sales to make profits. Therefore, if you plan to run a restaurant, color is the most important factor to consider when chefs prepare meals.
Hungry
Many people tend to find many foods tasty whenever they are hungry. Such people also might not like the taste of a particular food whenever they are not feeling hungry. As well, some colors such as yellow and orange tend to make people hungry.
The main aim for selling foodstuffs is to make profits from the sales. Therefore, the key factor is to create the illusion that people feel hungry. Such would motivate them into buying the particular food items.
Colors are known to have a psychological impact on the body. It is through such psychology that people get hungry. Therefore, color can be used to play around with the part of the brain that makes people hungry.
If your foodstuffs can contain the colors that make people hungry, it is advisable to utilize such colors. If your foodstuffs cannot include such colors, you should consider including the colors in the packaging. Such would compel people to buy your food items.
Conclusion: Color psychology for food
Now that you have known a few details about color psychology it is time to incorporate it advertising your business. People will always have a perception about color. Therefore, it is up to you to play around with such colors to identify those that compel your target clients to purchase your products.
Read Also: how to utilize color psychology in advertising. This will provide you with all the details you need to know about creating successful advertisements for your food business. Food items are perishable and therefore, you do not want to ruin your food business simply because you do not know how to create reliable advertisements: Black color meaning in advertising, marketing and business; OSHA Regulations for Restaurants; Marketing costs definition
Other resources: Best colors for the food business; Purine Rich Foods; Grana Padano Cheese During Pregnancy
Editions: Feb-sept 2022
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