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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Power of the retail ‘touch’
UI research: Hands touching items increases ‘psychological ownership’
Online holiday shopping may seem contrary to small and local business, but owners of those small businesses find adapting their online presence can boost in-person traffic.
“We’ve always thought word-of-mouth is the best way to build your brand,” said Chad Kleopfer, co-owner of Vintage Market & Supply Co. in the Czech Village. “That’s not the case anymore. You have to grab the attention of people who normally don’t go to the Village.”
“We really try, when we post something, to show the story behind it,” said Nikki Kettelkamp, owner of Scribe Stationer in Cedar Rapids’ NewBo district. “It probably has to do with humanizing it, or making it more attainable. To us, it’s more than just an object.”
‘Touch’ research
Research at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business has found simply showing a hand holding or touching a product can drive customers.
“It’s like trying to bring the personal feel of being in person, while trying to connect with consumers at a distance,” said Andrea Luangrath at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business
Luangrath’s research, published in 2022, found consumers who saw a product “virtually touched” were more engaged, even willing to pay more than if the item is displayed on its own.
“We know a lot about how if you actually touch a product how that affects consumers,” she said. “It increases things like the impulse purchase, or how much you’re willing to pay.”
To explore “vicarious touch,” Luangrath and her colleagues examined more than 4,000 Instagram posts from four companies showing tangible products displayed in someone’s hands. Their findings suggest even merely observing a product being touched establishes a connection to the hand on screen doing the touching, increasing “psychological ownership” of the product.
“It might be something that people intuitively know, but they explicitly know,” Luangrath said.
The findings appear to apply to any physical products.
“Primarily in products that have been hand-held to some degree,” Luangrath said. “Would this work for some kind of financial institution? Probably not. But we saw it across many product categories, so it’s not unique to just clothing or coffee.”
‘Go feel it’
Kloepfer has noted the “touch” effect in his Vintage Market social media postings.
“We’ll show a hand, or someone taking a picture of a mirror and they’re in the mirror,” Kloepfer said.
Kloepfer’s eclectic inventory of local-history items and movie and sports memorabilia lends itself to in-person browsing.
“The best thing to do is to go feel it,” he said. For toy collectors, “you’re a perfectionist about how the box is. Sometimes those things get thrown around in transit.”
Virtual reality
Online sellers may be able to further employ vicarious touch if and when shopping via virtual reality becomes, well, reality.
“The effect certainly does persist in VR,” Luangrath said. “When you see this hand touching a product, it makes you feel like it is your own. It fosters a connection with the product.”
Luangrath’s UI team recruited 144 students to a behavioral lab where they donned virtual reality headsets that depicted them inside a sportswear store. The virtual store simulated a brick-and-mortar retail space with mannequins and floor-to-ceiling clothing displays.
eBay maintained an early version of a virtual reality store, “but there was no touching connected with it,” Luangrath said. “You could look around and look at different products and navigate through different departments. The use of hands is quite important.”
Browse online, shop in-person
Kettelkamp saw something similar when she worked for the French luxury fashion house Chanel in New York City before returning to the Cedar Rapids area in 2011.
“The company I used to work for did a lot of studies,” she said, most of them focused on how websites and social media drive customer decisions.
“Even a planner can be a very generic thing, but we carry so many different varieties,” she said. “A planner’s personal. It’s almost like choosing a fragrance.”
Kettelkamp also sees that effect at her other store, Scout of Marion. The boutique’s website displays home goods, personal care, pantry, kids, and pet items.
“The largest group that did that was millennials,” she said. “They shop online, then they’d go to the store because they really wanted to see it and touch it.”
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