Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• meisam Aminzadeh vahedi ¹
• seyyed hamid khodadad Hosseini ²
• Beit Allah Akbari Moghadam ³

¹ Ph.D. Student in Business Management Dept., Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

² Professor of Business Management Dept., Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, IranCorresponding Author: khodadad@modares.ac.ir

³ Associate Professor of Economic Dept., Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

Abstract

 
The touch of the product plays an important role in the final decision of the customer when purchasing from physical and online retail, and the sensations that come to be enjoyed through touch enable them to experience the product from all angles. Therefore, considering the importance of touch, this research has investigated the lived experience of touching the product from the point of view of customers of physical and online stores. The following article is done with qualitative method and phenomenological paradigm. The research community is made up of electronic and clothing buyers from online and physical stores: Technolife, Adak, Havadar and Happyland in Tehran, and through semi-structured interviews, evidence was collected based on the purposeful sampling method. The interviews continued until reaching the theoretical saturation, and in this research, the interviews reached saturation with 15 people. Based on the extracted results, the main themes include; Product perception is physical touch, virtual touch, touch experiences, need for touch and touch perceptions. According to the results, managers of physical and online stores should provide conditions (such as the use of modern technologies) that touch and contact with the product happen to both groups of online and physical buyers so that they can buy products based on their needs and wants, and also this research can pave the way for the development of touch literature for researchers.

Introduction

The touch of the product plays an important role in the final decision of the customer when purchasing from physical and online retail, and the sensations that come to be enjoyed through touch enable them to experience the product from all angles. Therefore, considering the importance of touch, this research has investigated the lived experience of touching the product from the point of view of customers of physical and online stores.
Considering the importance of touch, this research seeks to answer this question: What are the themes of customers' lived experiences of understanding the concept of touch in physical and online shopping?
Literature Review
There is a lot of research in the field of sensory marketing, some of which have focused on the importance of touch and the use of technologies (which create a multi-sensory experience for consumers).)Labrecque, 2020,p:1013؛ Mishra et al, 2020,p:1(.Many researchers have shown that the decision to buy will be positive after specific and positive emotional reactions that occur after touching the product (Hultén, 2020; Krishna, 2013,p:56).
Retail companies recognize that product touch is an essential component of in-store experiences and explicitly encourage consumers to touch their products (Williams & Ackerman, 2011). On the other hand, online stores may use special features (for example, image magnification) to create a sense of tactile contact with products and create a so-called mental simulation with tactile products and create a favorable desire for their products (Overmars & Poels, 2015, p: 17). Meanwhile, touch interfaces may engage consumers with online shopping and influence their purchasing decisions (Chung et al, 2018, p: 795). Analyzed the main drivers for product purchase decisions and the differences between online and offline retailing. She confirmed that most of the consumers search about the product and check it mostly online, but when buying, they tend to go to physical stores (Gligorijevic, 2011). Touch in consumer behavior is a new research area (Jansson-Boyd, 2011a, p: 219), and considering the importance of touch in theoretical literature and its importance in customer decisions, this research has been conducted in this field.

Methodology

The current research is applied-developmental in terms of its purpose and was carried out based on the descriptive phenomenological approach, also practical and practical solutions for solving problems and improving processes were presented. This type of research is done to answer practical questions and meet practical needs (Maxwell et al, 2009, p: 198).
The following article is done with qualitative method and phenomenological paradigm. The research community is made up of electronic and clothing buyers from online and physical stores: Technolife, Adak, Havadar and Happyland in Tehran, and through semi-structured interviews, evidence was collected based on the purposeful sampling method. The interviews continued until reaching the theoretical saturation, and in this research, the interviews reached saturation with 15 people.

Results

The purpose of this research is to discuss how to understand the concept of touch in the process of purchasing product classes from physical (face-to-face) and online stores and to conduct a topical analysis based on descriptive phenomenology. Based on the extracted results, the main themes include; Product perception is physical touch, virtual touch, touches experiences, need for touch and touch perceptions. According to the results, managers of physical and online stores should provide conditions (such as the use of modern technologies) that touch and contact with the product happen to both groups of online and physical buyers so that they can buy products based on their needs and wants, and also this research can pave the way for the development of touch literature for researchers.

Discussion

The present study discusses how to understand the concept of touch in the process of purchasing product classes from physical (face-to-face) and online stores and conducts thematic analysis based on descriptive phenomenology. Based on this, the main theme of understanding the product includes sub-themes: understanding the personality of the product, ease of use of the product, emotional function and cognitive function, the main theme of physical touch of the product, including sub-themes: evaluation of inherent properties by hand touch and evaluation of geometric properties by hand touch, the main theme Touch and tactile perceptions include sub-topics: visual and audio virtual information and textual virtual information combined with sound and image, the content of touch experiences including sub-topics: product knowledge and familiarity with the brand; The theme of customer's need for touch includes sub-themes: instrumental touch and automatic touch, and the theme of tactile perceptions includes sub-themes: trust-seeking measures and compensatory return policy.

Conclusion

The results have shown that people for whom the need to touch is important because of reducing the risk in purchasing, to better recognize the product features, to ensure the usefulness and ease of use of the product, to acquire skills and better process product information by hand before purchasing, touched so that they can have a better evaluation of the product.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the stores and buyers who helped us in conducting the interviews.
 
Keywords: live Experience, product Touch, product Categories, physical and Online Store.
 
 
 

Keywords

• live experience
• product touch
• product categories
• physical and online store

Main Subjects

• Management approaches in the field of smart