What kind of shopper are you? A study out of Virginia Tech is revealing how colors could influence how much you spend.
Forget red and green. Red and blue could determine how much green you're left with this Christmas.
Rajesh Bagchi, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Virginia Tech studied how incidental exposure to certain colors can influence spending.
"Well a lot of times, because exposure is incidental, people are like no I don't behave that way. You know when I see colors that's not how I react. I just ignore it, but the truth is you don't know about it," says Bagchi.
In a retail setting like a mall, the study reveals when shoppers see red, even on something as unimportant as a shirt, unconsciously they become more aggressive. These shoppers likely go after the best deals and will walk away if the cost isn't in their favor.
"That's me," says Lil Clark who was out shopping at Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke on Thursday.
On the other hand, the color blue makes shoppers more passive, more frivolous spenders.
Now, apply those same colors to a different setting like an auction where it's all about negotiating. In this case, if you're the seller, using red anywhere in the background will stir the kind of aggression in a buyer to keep bidding.
"From the sellers perspective, it is more beneficial because then it will actually raise willingness to pay on Ebay and we actually have data from Ebay confirming that," says Bagchi.
So now that you know how red and blue affect your wallet, just how will you pay attention to those subliminal shopping tricks?
