Seeing Bigger: How Product‐Background Color Contrast Shapes Perception of Product Size

ABSTRACT While previous research has extensively examined visual factors influencing product size perception, the role of color contrast remains underexplored. Extending this line of literature, the present research investigates how product‐background color contrast shapes consumers' perception of product size. Across five studies and two supplementary experiments, we consistently find that higher (vs. lower) color contrast between a product and its background leads to a greater perceived product size. This effect holds across diverse product categories (e.g., watches, sofas, suitcases, and mouthwashes) and remains robust regardless of product color (e.g., blue, brown, silver, orange, or yellow) or specific contrasting combinations. The underlying mechanism is a sequential mediation process: higher product‐background color contrast enhances the visual clarity of the product's boundary, which improves processing fluency and ultimately increases perceived size. However, this effect diminishes when the visual background is highly complex. These findings contribute to the literature on color contrast, product size perception, and visual information processing, while offering practical insights for marketers on strategically leveraging color contrast to enhance product evaluations.