May 15th, 2009
The Role of Touch in Consumer Purchasing
Which of those woolly striped scarves are soft, not scratchy?
How would that expensive chef’s knife feel in your hand?
It’s easy to understand why consumers would want to touch certain things before deciding whether to buy them. But how important the feel of a product is to them—and how much it affects the likelihood that they will buy it—has only recently become the subject of marketing research. And a Wisconsin School of Business faculty member is at the forefront of this emerging field.
Associate Professor of Marketing Joann Peck has established herself as a leader in the area of touch research. She has helped increase understanding of touch-oriented consumer behavior and established a 12-item “need for touch” scale that other scholars now use in their own research. Her work, and the work of others that has followed, is providing tremendous insights into consumer behavior in a world where touch is sometimes not even possible.
Understanding the fifth sense
Your five senses play a role in many of our shopping decisions. A stereo ought to sound and look good; a piece of fish should look good and, well, not smell bad; a restaurant entrée must smell good and taste even better.
It’s easy to understand how individual opinions—about flavors, scents, sounds, and appearance—would influence customers’ buying preferences. But until recently, researchers didn’t understand the importance of how something feels to a consumer. They believed that the persuasive role of touch was limited to providing information about a product’s attributes.
“Touch can be an almost irresistible urge for children and adults, yet it hasn’t been studied much in marketing—certainly not as much as the other senses,” Peck says.
There are several variables that only the sense of touch can properly assess—texture, softness, weight, and temperature. Not surprisingly, any product that can vary in these attributes is more likely to lead customers to touch before making a purchase decision. For example, you might pick up three different laptops to determine which one is lightest for travel, or press on a pillow to see how firm it is. In a wine shop you might pick the most-chilled bottle of Chardonnay if you plan to drink it right away.
The study of touch in marketing is called “haptic” research. The word “haptic” comes from the Greek word hapticos, which means “able to lay hold of.” Psychologist J.J. Gibson adopted the term more than 40 years ago to refer to the active seeking and perception by the hands.
As one of the first steps in understanding the importance of haptics in consumer behavior, Peck created a taxonomy of touch to help categorize the motivations behind touching objects. She developed her system through formal observation at a grocery store, as well as informal observations at art fairs and retail establishments.
The first three types of touch fall into the category of “instrumental,” where the actions of the consumer are directed toward evaluating products and making purchase decisions. At the first level, a customer is simply touching the product to take it to the checkout area. At the next, the consumer may touch a product to obtain information that isn’t readily visible, as when she turns over a box to read a nutrition label or looks inside a shirt to see what size it is. In both of these scenarios, obtaining haptic information is not the goal, even though the hands are used in the act of learning about the product.
The third type of touch is geared toward determining product attributes, as described above. None of our other senses can effectively assess weight, temperature, texture, or softness. The touch of the fingertips on the object is essential to evaluating the product along these criteria.
The fourth type of touch has nothing to do with information gathering at all—yet it is perhaps the most critical in terms of its impact on marketing. In this type of touch, called “hedonic” or “autotelic” touch, the sensory experience of touching an object is an end unto itself. Running your hand over a cashmere blanket or holding a smooth piece of pottery in your hand—just for the sake of it—is part of the shopping experience. It’s also, we now know, closely tied to the purchasing patterns of certain kinds of consumers.
“It just feels good”
Just as some products warrant more touching than others to determine quality or material properties, some people are more tempted than others to touch them. To identify them, Peck and Terry Childers of the University of Kentucky developed a 12-item “Need for Touch” (NFT) scale. It is similar to existing scales that assess individual needs, such as Need for Cognition and Need to Evaluate. Peck and Childers categorized responses to the survey questions as being either “instrumental” or “autotelic.”
“We split people 50/50 along the lines of ‘high need for touch’ and ‘low need for touch,’” Peck says. “And from there we were able to begin studying ways to effectively reach people with high need for ‘autotelic’ touch—especially in shopping environments where touch is difficult or impossible.
Not surprisingly, individuals who rate higher in NFT struggle with product judgments when they are unable to have physical contact with the object. By contrast, confidence in judgment among people with low NFT is unaffected by a barrier to touch—as long as there is a clear picture of the product.
In another important find, Peck discovered that impulse buying is more common among people with high autotelic NFT. “Touching seems to increase the sense of ownership of a product,” she says. Once you feel you “own” the product you are holding, the next logical step is to buy it, of course. Several years ago Peck and Childers explored the link between impulse purchasing and environmental encouragement to touch—and in turn related these along the NFT scale. As part of their study, they observed people in the produce department of a supermarket while they shopped for peaches or nectarines. Some shoppers encountered a sign saying “feel the freshness” that encouraged them to touch the fruit. For others, the fruit was simply displayed with no sign. All the shoppers, regardless of their NFT level, were more likely to touch the fruit with the sign. But those who ranked high in autotelic NFT were more likely to buy it.
Implications for marketers
We’ve come a long way from the days of the old TV commercial with a woman scolding “Mr. Whipple—please don’t squeeze the Charmin!” and signs bearing the ominous message “Don’t touch the merchandise.” Because of the growing understanding of the importance of touch, many products are now packaged or displayed to encourage physical handling. Consider ballpoint pens that have open windows cut out of their blister packs so consumers can feel how comfortable the grip is, or bedding sets that are tied with a ribbon rather than completely covered by packaging of some kind. Responding to customers’ instrumental and autotelic needs for touch can make them more confident about purchasing products that vary in material attributes.
Peck’s research reveals a different spin on the buying patterns of multichannel shoppers—the most sought-after group in the marketplace. Retailers have observed for some time that many people research products online but then go to “brick-and-mortar” stores for their purchases. But we now know that consumers with high NFT are likely to do the opposite: they’ll inspect a product in person to get their touch “fix,” and then with that confidence they’ll return home to buy it from a website for the best possible price.
When physical contact isn’t possible, marketers have to compensate. One answer is good copywriting.
“As the percentage of online retail business grows, companies will have to present their attributes differently,” Peck says. “Some, like weight, are easy to describe verbally. But others—especially texture—are more challenging.
“Evocative marketing copy can really make a difference,” she says. “One of the interesting things we found is that if a person is asked to close his eyes and imagine touching an item, this is as effective as actually touching it.”
Taking touch beyond retail
Touch can play an important role in consumer decisions when spending money on things other than buying goods. Peck and Jennifer Wiggins of Kent State University conducted a test for a children’s museum that often relies on direct-mail appeals to solicit donations and expand its member base.
Peck and Wiggins worked with the fundraising staff at the museum to design a brochure to increase membership. The cover featured a picture of a cartoon dinosaur with a child reaching out to touch it. In half the brochures, a fuzzy dot was glued to the cover of the mailing piece.
The museum mailed the brochure to about 2,000 non-member families with children under the age of eight in the target-market area. The families also received a survey with questions about the recipient’s attitude toward the message and likelihood of donating time or money, as well as control questions about prior donations and questions designed to determine where the recipients placed on the autotelic NFT scale. “What surprised us was that the fuzzy dot on the brochures increased persuasion among high-touch people,” Peck says. “They spent more time with the mailer and indicated that they would be more likely to become a member of the museum as well.”
See it, feel it, buy it
Last summer the first-ever conference devoted to sensory marketing took place at the University of Michigan. The field is exploding as researchers consider new ways to explore the relationship between touch and perceived value, touch and taste, touch and pretty much everything imaginable.
As more and more research becomes available on the importance of touch in product design, packaging, and marketing, businesses will have more information to determine the proper level of investment in tactile features. It’s clear that the age of sensory marketing has arrived—and companies will do well to pay increased attention to the role the five senses play in consumer decision-making. “New research in marketing is clearly moving toward multisensory areas,” Peck says. “It’s an exciting time to be investigating how consumers make sense of their world.”