It is being said that color differences between packages of the same product will impact sales. However, there is no proof for that. I’ve been looking at many studies over the past years, but never found one single study showing this. Even on the contrary…
A recent experiment on LinkedIn showed a picture of multiple packages of coffee in a shop. It’s a brand which has a very specific blue as signature color, next to a golden background and a full black as a secondary color. In the shop, some packages had a vibrant blue, the others had a more dark blue. When measured, the difference turned out to be 11 delta E2000 (dE00 in short, the unit we use to define color differences). Some people claim that a 2 dE00 should be the maximum, otherwise it will impact sales they argue.
But that little experiment on LinkedIn, with over 2000 people that viewed the post, showed something different: nobody really complained about that color difference! There were only a few comments and these were even gentle…
Conclusion: when the ‘print part’ of our brain isn’t activated, small color differences don’t matter… People only care about tiny tolerances in print when it’s part of their job description, AND when they are on the job. If someone is claiming that a 2 dE00 is a must, that person is either trying to sell you color related services or tools, or is protecting his job (e.g. someone who participates in press checks).
BTW: color is just one of the cues to find and select a product, there are also other factors. When enough boxes are checked, we will conclude that the product in front of us is the one we wanted to buy. Not all boxes needed to be checked, just enough. When that isn’t the case, e.g. due to a rebranding, you might get a scenario like the (in)famous Tropicana rebranding. Which failed because it was too different from the previous design.
Read all the details about this experiment on the insights4print.ceo website!