Thursday, September 16, 2010

Let them touch it.

It is an old truth in retailing that letting people touch the merchandise induces feelings of actually owning the product already, and thereby making people more willing to buy.

Most retailers have built their Mobile Commerce systems with the assumption that, to customers, a smartphone is just like holding the store in the palms of their hands. But that may be wrong, according to researchers at the California Institute of Technology. A Caltech team ran experiments that show customers are willing to pay about 50 percent more for products they can actually touch while shopping, compared with purchases based on just a text description or picture.

Read the research paper here.o
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