An Analysis on Korean’s and Chinese’s Perception of Red in Color Marketing

Abstract

Color marketing is a marketing strategy that stimulates a customer’s purchasing needs through color. As manufacturing techniques of businesses became standardized, it was color that decided which product for customers to choose. The fundamental logic of this marketing strategy is that because people react emotional towards color, it is directly related to the impulse to buy. This paper has shown a comparative analysis on how the Chinese’s most favored color, red, is perceived in Korea and China. A total of 200 men and women participated in the questionnaire. The questionnaire scale consisted of interval scale, ordinal scale, and nominal scale. The questionnaire is about the various feelings of Chinese and Koreans about the red color. These includes love, hatred, power, courage, attractive, warmth, energy, irritation, pleasure, joy of life, luck, jut, noisy, extrovert, anger, aggressive, excitement, danger, prohibition, temptation, sexual, eros, immorality, dynamic and enthusiastic. The results were, most Korean tended to perceive the color red negatively, associating it with negative-meaning words whereas most Chinese to perceive it positively, associating it with positive-meaning words.