University of Twente Student Theses
Touching a product: essential or expendable? Replicating haptic product exploration via other senses
Roost, B.G.B.H.M. (2013) Touching a product: essential or expendable? Replicating haptic product exploration via other senses.
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| Abstract: | Online shopping is becoming increasingly popular. However, it is not possible to provide fully realistic product experiences on the internet. The answer to this problem could lie within sensory marketing. Sensory marketing is a fairly new type of marketing, nonetheless it is becoming more interwoven in our society. This research investigates whether a certain aspect of real product experience (i.e. haptic exploration of products) can be replicated via other senses (i.e. audiovisual presentations of products). An experiment was conducted with 129 Dutch participants to see if audiovisual representations of products (i.e. cardigan and computer mouse) could replicate a real product experience and thus improve product attitude, product emotion and purchase intention. The Need For Touch was considered as a moderator. Results showed that there were no significant differences between the product representations (audiovisual, visual and real product). Need For Touch did have significant effects on purchase intention, interacted with gender and women had a significantly higher amount of autotelic NFT than men. Looking at our results, we suggest that videos (with or without audio cues) which replicate haptic product exploration can be a good replacement for real products experiences or can come very close to real product experiences and their effects on consumers (regarding purchase intention, product emotion and product attitude). However, further investigation is needed. It does not seem to matter to people whether they see a product in real life or on a screen if the screen presentation shows a dynamic video of product exploration. This could be explained by the fact that these types of videos facilitate mental simulation of certain bodily functions and this could have effects on consumers (e.g. higher purchase intention). A second explanation could be the fact that a ‘screen revolution’ is amongst our society due to the growing amount of technology and internet shopping. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 05 communication studies |
| Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64344 |
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