• USA Today , Monday, December 8, 2008 11 AM

From small electronics to big appliances, kitchen décor to luggage, one surefire way to battle the retail blues is with color, Bruce Horovitz reports. Color can even be the key "differentiator" for a customer shopping for a computer today, says Ed Boyd, Dell's design chief. The reason a customer buys one computer instead of another may be because it's green, he claims.

"Color is the one area where consumers are saying, 'I'm going to indulge,' " says Marshal Cohen, retail guru at NPD Group. "When you add color to a product, you stimulate the consumer's awareness that the version they already have is obsolete."

Earlier this year, Crayola urged kids to create new names for eight of its old colors. And so, laser lemon became "super happy." Vivid tangerine became "fun in the sun." Turquoise blue became "happily ever after."

"Kids want their homes to feel warm, inviting, friendly and harmonious," says Crayola CEO Mark Schwab. "People are looking for things that are uplifting."

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