Tactile Stimulation and Consumer Response

Abstract

Tactile behavior is a basic communication form as well as an expression of inter-personal involvement. This articie presents three studies offering evidence for the positive role of casual interpersonal touch on consumer behavior. iVIore specifically, it provides initial support for the view that tactile stimulation in various consumer behavior situations enhances the positive feeling for and evaluation of both the external stimuli and the touching source. Further, customers touched by a requester tend to comply more than customers in no-touch conditions. Implications for con-sumer behavior theory and research are discussed. T he scene was a university library. It could just aseasily have been the local supermarket, bank, or restaurant. What happened took half a second, and it was not noticed by the recipients. Remarkably, how-ever, it influenced the recipients ' evaluation of the li-brary. Fisher, Rytting and Heslin (1976) investigated the effects of a brief "accidental " touch in a nonintimate context. They had male and female clerks return library