Results indicated consumers considered companies with blue logos to be more eco-friendly, compared to those with red logos.

 

University of Oregon and University of Cincinnati gave shoppers a fictitious⁴ logo with a color of a known brand.

 

'What we're finding is that color biases the way consumers make ethical judgments,' Aparna said Sundar, a professor of marketing⁵ in the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business.

 

'Of course green is one of those colors, but blue is also one of those colors that consumers associate with eco-friendliness.'

 

It only took one unfamiliar⁶ logo for researchers to discover shoppers consider retailers⁸ using Walmart's blue or Sam's green in their logos to be more eco-friendly than those using Trader Joe's red.

 

'Interestingly, blue is 'greener' than green in terms of conveying an impression of eco-friendliness, despite the frequent use of the word green to convey that idea,' said co-author James Kellaris of the University of Cincinnati's marketing department.

 

Once researchers established a set of eco-friendly colors, they also identified colors perceived to be environmentally unfriendly, such as Target's red.The results indicated that seeing a more eco-friendly color in a logo influences consumer judgments, and ethically⁹ ambiguous business practices seemed more ethical.

 

Follow-up studies found that shoppers were more critical of a retailer⁷ with an eco-friendly-colored logo when presented with a procedure that was definitely ethical or definitely unethical.

 

While individual differences still play a role in this observed effect of color, Sundar's research suggests that color used in a logo has far-reaching consequences on consumers' perceptions of retailers.

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