Multisensory interaction in product choice: Grasping a product affects choice of other seen products
作者研究了消费者在购物时触摸一个产品如何影响对其他产品的选择和感知。通过实验发现，当消费者抓握一个产品（源产品）时，会提高他们对另一个触感相似产品的视觉流畅性，从而增加选择该产品的可能性，但不会提高支付意愿（研究1）。此外，在视觉拥挤（而非稀疏）的产品展示中，触摸对选择其他触感相似产品的影响更强，并且个体的工具性触摸需求会进一步调节这一效应（研究2）。结果表明，营销人员可以通过操控或模仿消费者抓握产品的触觉特征（如形状和大小）来设计包装，促进消费者对产品的视觉加工，从而增加选择。
Abstract Consumers often touch products before reaching purchase decisions, and indeed touch improves evaluations of the given product. The present research investigates how touching a given product influences perception and choice of other seen products. We show that grasping a source product increases the visual fluency of a haptically similar product, thereby increasing the likelihood of choosing that product, but not the willingness to pay for it (Study 1). We also show that visually crowded rather than sparse product displays increase the effect of touch on choosing other haptically similar products, and that individuals’ instrumental need for touch further modulates this effect (Study 2). Our results suggest that by manipulating or mimicking the haptic features (e.g., shape and size) of objects that consumers grasp while shopping, marketers can develop packaging that facilitates consumers’ visual processing of their products, thereby increasing choice of those products.