Get in touch with your feelings of ownership

As a sci-fi fan I instinctively appreciate an academic research paper that begins with a quote from a Star Trek movie. But when the paper then goes on to prove that touching a product makes you more likely to buy it, the content is of interest as well.

The paper I am referring to, authored by Joann Peck and Susan B. Shu and titled "The Effect of Mere Touch on Perceived Ownership" has just been published in the Journal of Consumer Research. However, I believe that by focusing on the effects of touch, I think the authors have obscured a much more important finding.

To open, Peck and Shu quote a brief dialog from the movie Star Trek: First Contact:

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: It's a boyhood fantasy...I must have seen this ship hundreds of times in the Smithsonian but I was never able to touch it.

Lieutenant Commander Data: Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception?

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Oh Yes! For humans, touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way.

After reviewing the results of their experiments into the effect of touch on perceptions of ownership and value Peck and Shu conclude:

"Finally, our research supports Jean-Luc Picard's claim...In four studies, we found that touch does connect a person to an object by increasing the feeling of ownership of the object."

The results of their research make intuitive sense to me. Before I succumbed to my desire to buy an iPod Touch, I visited the Apple store twice. Each time, I picked up the iPod Touch and handled it. Touching the device spoke volumes and had more effect on my ultimate decision to purchase one than the advertising I had seen. But, having said that, I think the authors downplay an important finding from their research.

Peck and Shu's results clearly demonstrate that touching a product does increase perceptions of value. But they also demonstrated that when people are unable to touch an object, they value it more highly if they imagine they own it. And the magnitude of each of these effects is comparable, if not biased in favor of ownership imagery alone (average valuation of $3.59 without touch compared to $3.34 with touch).

So why might this be? When I picked up an iPod Touch for the first time, I imagined when and where I might use it. I played around with the different apps, and this made me reflect on what it would be like to watch videos on the plane, to listen to music in my hotel room and to share photos with my friends. In other words, I imagined owning it.

This leads me to suspect that both groups of people – the ones who touched the product and the ones who did not - imagined what it would be like to own the product. Peck and Shu's research therefore leads me to a more general conclusion than that of the authors. My conclusion would be that encouraging perceptions of ownership can have a significant impact on valuation. A variety of mechanisms could achieve that effect, just one of which is touch.

For instance, I believe that this is an undervalued property of video advertising. One of video's major advantages over print and display advertising is that the combination of images and sounds makes it far easier for people to imagine what it is like to own a brand. In some cases, it can help focus that imagining on specific aspects of the brand experience (click here to read "Rehearsing reality.")

While touching a physical product may be the best means to encourage them to imagine owning it, I would suggest that other advertising formats and particularly video could have the same effect.

So, what do you think? Does touch encourage people to imagine owning a brand, or is it simply the tactile impression that matters? Please share your thoughts.