Perception of Color Value

The saying goes, "The grass is greener on the other side."

I've found that it is surprisingly easy to make people associate value to color.  All I need to do is assign a ranking of colors corresponding to some value or rarity, and when I introduce a new one on top, it seems to trump all the rest, no matter what the color is.

Let's try an example.  Say I have custom Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bomb stickers in a variety of colors.  The point of them is to randomly be stuck on people when they do something amazing or say something funny or whatever.  The colors are listed from best to worst, along with the number of each I have to distribute.

Even in this brief introduction to a quite odd scenario, it is easy to assign a lot of value to the light blue stickers.  Wow, I wish I could get a light blue sticker.

A lot of manufacturers use this concept to help sell their products.  Packaging on the less expensive type of widgets might be a light blue color, but the packaging of the more expensive type might be a bright red.  "Special Edition" or "Pro versions" of some products might feature exclusive colors, using this perception of color value to not only distinguish between versions, but also to assign additional artificial value to their product.

This is also easy to see in the assigned value of poker chips, especially unlabeled ones.  If, at the start of the game, I assign the blue chips to be worth 1, the green to be 5, red 10, black 50, and white 100, when someone bets a white chip it's a big deal.  Because of the arbitrary value assigned to the colors, the differing value and importance of the chips is heightened.

In many cases the color scheme only has to be different to make it seem like an improvement.