Case study

The impact of colour on children’s brand choices

Helen had decided that her master’s research project would lie within the area of branding,
specifically focusing on the role that colour plays in brand choice. From her review of the
literature she knew that colour could prompt a swifter response to a brand than either the written
word or imagery and was the quickest path to emotion creation (Hayes et al. 2006). She was
very interested in children as a consumer group, especially as they are becoming increasingly
targeted as influential consumers. She had read that the average child in the UK sees 20–40,000
television adverts every year (Lindstrom 2003) and in research conducted by Roper and Shah
(2007) 90 per cent of children had agreed if they saw a brand in a television or magazine advert
it would have a positive affect on their purchase intentions. Helen wanted to explore this
attachment with brands, further focusing on the question of whether colour played a role in
brand choice and, if so, what strategies could be recommended for use by brand managers?
Helen decided an experiment would be the best strategy for researching this question. Initially
she designed the experiment procedure which included producing mock-up packaging of
fictitious brands within the confectionery market. The only difference being the dominant colour
in the brand logo. In her experiment she planned to ask children which one they preferred and
why. She decided on colour as a variable as she learnt that on average people make judgements
with respect to products within 90 seconds of their initial interactions, and up to 90 per cent of
that assessment is based on colour alone (Singh 2006).
The first step was to gain ethical approval. She designed the experiment in line with her
university’s Code of Ethics and applied to the ethics committee. Her research proposal was
however initially rejected on the grounds that it involved confectionery products and therefore
could potentially encourage unhealthy eating in children. The committee also questioned
whether schools would agree to participate in research on confectionery products for the same
reason, commenting that obesity in children under 11 years old had risen by over 40 per cent in
10 years and the UK now had the highest obesity rate in Europe (Mayo and Nairn 2009).
Bearing this in mind, Helen changed her proposal to focus instead on healthy snack food
products and resubmitted her application, which was approved. Now with ethical approval, she
needed to obtain official clearance that she was safe to work with children from the UK’s
Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). She completed the relevant forms and received a letter stating
that she was ‘cleared’ to work with children.
Now she was ready to contact schools. She was interested in younger children, aged 4 to 11, so
needed to conduct her research in primary schools. She was convinced that, now her research
had a healthy eating focus, schools would be responsive to her requests; but also appreciated
that schools were very busy and that she had to minimise their time and resources disruption.
She understood that the head teacher was the key decision maker (and gatekeeper) so therefore
telephoned her sample of schools to ascertain the head teacher details and whether an email or
letter introduction would be best. Once this information was ascertained Helen emailed or sent a
letter to the head teacher explaining her research and the possible benefits to the school for
participating in her research. She was met with a very positive response, with many of the
schools saying that they would use her research to work towards their Healthy Eating Charter
status.
Once the schools had agreed to participate, the next challenge was to obtain permission from
parents for their children to participate in her research. Helen produced packs for the schools to
post to their children’s parents. Each pack contained:
• a covering letter to the parent detailing the experiment and the healthy eating aspect,
• an appropriately worded participant information sheet for both the parent and the child
explaining exactly what would happen in the experiment and emphasising that the child could
withdraw at any time from the experiment,
• a consent form for the parent to complete and give to their child to return to their class
teacher.
Helen found this a very lengthy process which took between two and three months from the
initial contact with a school to the time when Helen had sufficient children with consent to
proceed with the experiment. Additionally, on the day of the experiment some of the children
who had returned the form were absent from school whilst others (especially the older children)
were not allowed out of their lessons due to important topics being covered that day. Out of the
765 packs she distributed, Helen eventually undertook 301 experiments.
When the experiments were completed Helen entered the results into the IBM SPSS Statistics
analysis software. She coded each child with a unique number in order to maintain the
confidentiality of their responses. She then analysed her results.

Questions
1. List the problems researchers can encounter when conducting research on children.
2. Outline the ethical issues Helen had to consider and how she addressed them.