There's a reason Tide is bright orange: the color is aggressive, it screams for a call to action, "buy me, buy me, buy me." Black means luxury. Banks love blue and green because they exude trust and relax you, plus money is green.
KISSmetrics has collected this handy infographic on how colors affect our buying decisions, including which colors attract impulse buyers or budget shoppers. All of this quantified data, however pretty, is just another window into the terrifyingly sophisticated psychology behind consumer marketing.
Sometimes it's used to manipulate us for our own good—getting patients to take their medicine with soothing purple shades for instance. But those same colors are also used to push anti-aging cremes that might be totally useless. With knowledge is power, or awareness of our retail urges anyway.
Scroll on down and see what marketers are thinking about you when they choose a color to thrust in front of you, and consider how much, if at all, you think Tide's bright "call to action" orange gets you feeling ready to pick that over the store brand.
If it's too hard to read the text below, here's a larger version.
Via PSFK
