Pricing
Tactic

Display Red Prices to Men

Men make decisions quickly, and they assume that red prices indicate savings.

Price tag with price in red font being shown to man

Overview

Men prefer prices in red fonts:.

Men seem to process the ads less in-depth and use price color as a visual heuristic to judge perceived savings (Puccinelli et al., 2013, p. 121).

The effect has been replicated in different cultures, and it can happen with females too (Van Droogenbroeck, Van Hove, & Cordemans, 2018; Kim & Jang, 2022).

Caveats:

  • Discount size must be meaningful. A red price worked for a 30% discount, but it decreased conversions for a 5% discount (Kim & Jang, 2022).
  • All prices need to be red. Changing a single price could backfire (Ye, Bhatt, Jeong, & Zhang, 2020).

  • Puccinelli, N. M., Chandrashekaran, R., Grewal, D., & Suri, R. (2013). Are men seduced by red? The effect of red versus black prices on price perceptions. Journal of Retailing, 89(2), 115-125.
  • Kim, H., & Jang, J. M. (2022). Disadvantages of red: The color congruence effect in comparative price advertising. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1019163.
  • Van Droogenbroeck, E., Van Hove, L., & Cordemans, S. (2018). Do red prices also work online?: An extension of Puccinelli et al.(2013). Color Research & Application, 43(1), 110- 113.
  • Ye, H., Bhatt, S., Jeong, H., Zhang, J., & Suri, R. (2020). Red price? Red flag! Eye-tracking reveals how one red price can hurt a retailer. Psychology & Marketing, 37(7), 928-941.