Kansei Color Concepts in Interface Design for Mexican and Japanese E-Commerce Websites

Nowadays e-Commerce web designers face the problems to create systems that are not only usable but also appealing, and to improve the consumers´ interface persuasive power through engineering affective-appeal techniques. In order to contribute to meet this challenge, this study conducted two experimental studies focusing mainly on one perceptual feature, website color, while solving the problem structured on its proposed case scenario: a brick and mortar sportswear company expanding overseas, targeting Japan or Mexico, will migrate online and wishes to utilize its e-store interface colors to be appealing and influence customers´ arousal levels. Therefore, this researched took the aim to identify the most influential emotional and aesthetic Kansei factors for Japanese and Mexican young adults when evaluating sports-wear e-store interfaces and their color preferences, while correlating Kansei factors to individual colors. Results showed that the Japanese population was more critical depending on the level of emotional arousal experienced on emotions such as, cheerfulness and excitement, while seeking the novel aesthetics of consistency, dynamicity and modernity. However, only the role and impact of gender of an interface was effectively measured on the Mexican population. Colors preference similarities, with their individual Kansei interpretations, were successfully mapped for male´s and female´s e-store interfaces. The main originality of these studies lay in the adoption of Kansei Engineering on the e-Commerce context as a systematic method to engineer consumers´ emotional and affective responses and incorporate them into new guidelines of web design.