The role of background color, interletter spacing, and font size on preferences in the digital presentation of a product

Abstract

The main goal of this research was the analysis of persons’ attitudes toward digital graphical information regarding various types of smartphone’s virtual package designs. Sixty students from two different faculties were involved in the study. Both the faculty and gender effects were controlled. The packages were electronically presented to the subjects on the computer screen. A binary pairwise procedure within the framework of the conjoint analysis was employed to assess the examinees’ preferences. The experimental stimuli differed in the brand name location in relation to the product image (left and right hand side), background colors used (grey and pink), and the typography applied to the brand name (big and compact text versus small with the increased interletter spacing). The main results showed significant effects of brand name location and typography along with significant interactions concerned with the background package color. Generally, males preferred grey variants while females – pink. These results analyzed along with the conjoint analysis outcomes surprisingly show that the background color was the main factor influencing males’ preferences while for women it was the least important issue. The cluster analysis results demonstrated significant interpersonal discrepancies and identified three, similar in number, groups sharing common preference structures.