Colour blindness in men effects shopping

Colour blindness affects 1 in 12 men, yet major menswear retailers appear to be unaware of the situation that may be costing them sales, according to new research from GlobalData.

For those with perfect colour vision, colour blindness is a difficult condition to comprehend, said the researchers, as essentially it means that some colours can be difficult to identify and get confused with others. For instance, some men who have colour blindness reported often confusing greens, browns and reds.

When shopping, these complications continue as even though the colour blind perceive colour differently, they still want to know which colour others perceive it to be, or what the accepted ‘official’ colour is.

GlobalData states that by just naming the colours on the label would give those with the genetic condition the confidence to make purchases, but major menswear retailers including H&M, Next, TK Maxx all fail to do so and are missing out on sales as a result.

The difficulties GlobalData says forces shoppers online as websites tend to state the colour, though it is unhelpful when the way to search by colour is by clicking on a colour rather than its name, or the retailer has chosen monikers for individual products like ‘volt’, ‘lava glow’, ‘coral’ or ‘fuscia‘. With both menswear market leader Marks and Spencer and John Lewis are guilty of the latter approach.

Images: ‘colour blind simulation’ is how someone with deuteranopia-type colour blindness sees the original image - both courtesy of GlobalData/Colour Blind Awareness