A study has confirmed what you all may have suspected ie that customers are more likely to buy a product if they can touch it. Apparently, touching a product gives you an increased belief in your perceived ownership of that product. This makes sense when you think about it as it is basic human reaction. Even 5 year old kids do it – they touch something and then they think it is theirs.

Interestingly the study also went on to confirm that once a customer has touched the product they are more likely to pay more for it. Now this is something for every retailer to think about. Make your products touchable as much as you can. How many retailers can you think of where you can have a physical product experience? Apple is great. Body Shop is pretty good. Department stores are not so great – ever touched a TV in Farmers or Bond and Bond? What if you could? Would you feel that you had some perceived ownership of it?

What if Department stores spent less energy thinking about the customer journey through their store and concentrated more on enabling the customer to have a physical experience instead? This study would indicate better business success would result.

It seems to me that one of the main reasons we cannot touch a lot of product is that the store owners do not trust us to do so and thus those owners design their retail outlets for the untrustworthy. If they trusted us more maybe they would sell more because once we touch it we feel we own it so why would we damage it? Are the untrustworthy the majority? I wouldn’t have thought so. So retailers, let’s look at allowing more appropriate touching.

This touching thing is all well and good but it doesn’t help online retailers much – that’ll be my next post.