Effects Of Saturation-location Congruency On Product Evaluation

A considerable body of psychological and neuroscientific research has demonstrated the existence of robust sensory correspondences between various features,attributes,or dimensions of experience in different sensory modalities.Despite findings indicating the importance of sensory correspondences to human information processing,research on the color saturation and location has not to date focused sufficiently on this phenomenon.The present study examines how the color saturation and the location of the target objects interact to affect consumers' evaluation of products via perceived visual weight.Based on the literature on the relationship between color saturation and perceived visual weight,the relationship between location and perceived visual weight,and sensory correspondences,this paper develops our theoretical framework.Furthermore,we conduct five experiments to explore the congruency effect of color saturation and location on evaluation of products via shared perceived weight.The current research shows that when displaying products available in different colors,locating lower-saturation color on the top/left and higher-saturation color on the bottom/right leads to more favorable product evaluation(Studies 1A and 1B).This effect occurs because consumers perceive both higher-saturation color and the bottom/right location as heavier.The congruency between color saturation and location results in a feeling of fluency,which is misattributed to the product.For that reason,the focal effect diminishes among consumers who do not believe higher-saturation color is heavier(Study 2),who are primed to consider objects on the right as not heavier(Study 3),and who may feel that their feelings are irrelevant when making a product evaluation because they are not typical customers(Study 4).