Yes, “Touch” Matters: The Impact of Touch on Consumer Creativity

In many product categories, consumers are integrally engaged in design of a product in order to customize it to their own needs. In such cases, the level of creativity displayed by a consumer may lead to superior outcomes. Creativity may be influenced by individ ual factors (some consumers more creative than others), the environment, and even the product. In our research, we are interested in examining the effect of perceptual cues on creativity. For example, when designing clothes, how does a haptic cue (e.g., feeling the fabric) influence creativity? There is a long history regarding the importance of the sense of touch. Aristotle believed that touch mediates every type of sense perception, even vision (Siegel 1970). In the marketing literature, research on the role of haptics has risen in prominence, perhaps encouraged by the surge of online shopping. In such contexts an important question is how to compensate for the lack of touch (Peck and Childers 2007). However, research on the impact of touch or haptics on creative consumption is an unexplored question, which we seek to address. Previous research acknowledges that in creativity, haptics plays an important role. Because it is effective in facilitating learning and memory (Lacey and Campbell 2006) as well as provides sensory experience and fun (Peck 2009). However, despite the importance of haptic cues for creativity, due to surge of online consumption contexts, haptic cues become less accessible. In this paper, we discuss the potential benefits and applications of haptics to foster creative consumption in a marketing setting.