Tactile Marketing - From practice to theory (and back again)

The influence of tactile input (touch vs. no touch or look) on consumer behaviour is widely studied in academia and practiced in industry. However, how product characteristics: sensory (psychophysical) and emotional (affective), together with salient touch quality, (diagnostic or non-diagnostic) influence behaviour is largely unexplored. This study conducts two experiments based on practice knowledge; one with a product where touch quality is non-diagnostic (n= 200) and the other where the touch quality is diagnostic (n= 360) to examine this issue. The findings show that touch is more influential to understand affective characteristics, whereas look is more important to understand the psychophysical characteristics for products where touch quality is non-diagnostic in nature. On the other hand, the influence of touch on behaviour is more pronounced for products with high psychophysical (affective) characteristics when the touch quality is diagnostic in nature. The results provide new directions to retail theory and practice.

http://www.gika-academy.com/gika-2016-valencia/