Pimmanee Rattanawicha and Sutthipong Yungratog, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

To understand how colour contrast in e-Commerce websites, such as hotel & travel websites, affects (1) emotional perception (i.e. pleasant, arousal, and dominance), (2) trust, and (3) purchase intention of visitors, a two-phase empirical study is conducted. In the first phase of this study, 120 volunteer participants are asked to choose the most appropriate colour from a colour wheel for a hotel & travel website. The colour “Blue Cyan”, the most chosen colour from this phase of study, is then used as the foreground colour to develop three hotel & travel websites with three different colour contrast patterns for the second phase of the study. A questionnaire is also developed from previous studies to collect emotional perception, trust, and purchase intention data from another group of 145 volunteer participants. It is found from data analysis that, for visitors as a whole, colour contrast has significant effects on their purchase intention. For male visitors, colour contrast significantly affects their trust and purchase intention. Moreover, for generation X and generation Z visitors, colour contrast has effects on their emotional perception, trust, and purchase intention. However, no significant effect of colour contrast is found in female or generation Y visitors.

Colour Contrast, e-Commerce, Website Design