触摸还是不触摸？产品触觉在消费者购买过程中的作用及机理研究：动态演进视角

产品触觉是消费者评估产品的重要途径。已有产品触觉研究关注了产品触觉对消费者产品评估和购买的作用。至于产品触觉在不同购买阶段的作用如何？这些研究并没有探讨。然而，消费者面临的购前信息负荷和选择过剩、购买时不愿意延迟满足、及购后因购买后悔引发的投诉退货频发等是我国当前国民经济发展过程中的突出问题。实践表明，这些问题在线上（vs.线下）消费者不能（vs.可以）购前触摸产品时更为明显。本项目从产品触觉着手，拟运用营销学、心理学和组织行为学的理论和方法（实验室实验、田野实验、大数据分析、访谈、问卷调查等）来探究产品触觉对消费者购前信息搜寻内容（子项目1）和产品属性偏好权衡（子项目2）、购买时跨期决策（子项目3）、及购后购买后悔（子项目4）的影响、机制和边界。通过这种动态演进视角，本项目能推进已有产品触觉、信息搜寻、属性偏好、跨期决策、及购后后悔等领域，并指导线上和线下零售企业及服务业的相应营销实践。

Touching a product is an important way for consumers to evaluate a product. Existing research on product touch had examined how product touch affected consumers’ product evaluation and purchasing intention. However, the issue of how product touch plays its role in different purchasing phases, is still unexamined. This issue is worthy of study, because currently consumers’ information overload and choice overload prior to purchase, their unwillingness to delay gratification when purchasing a product, and their frequent experiences of post-purchase regret, etc., are tough economic and social issues in China. Many practical phenomena have shown that these issues are more evident in online shopping contexts (when consumers can touch a product prior to purchase) than in offline shopping contexts (when consumers cannot touch a product prior to purchase). Therefore, this research project intends to focus on product touch and to examine the effect of product touch on consumers’ information searching contents (Sub-project 1), on consumers’ preference trade-offs between different product attributes (Sub-project 2) prior to purchase, on consumers’ inter-temporal choice making during purchasing the product (Sub-project 3), and on consumers’post-purchase regret (Sub-project 4). When conducting these sub-projects, we will use theories from marketing, psychology and organizational behavior, and will utilize multiple research methods including lab experiments and field experiments, surveys, big data analyses and interview. Through examining the role of product touch in consumers’ various purchasing phases, we believe this research project can significantly advance research on product touch, information searching, product attribute preferences, consumers’ inter-temporal choice making and post-purchase regret. We also believe this research project can provide helpful marketing implications for online and offline retailing companies, as well as for service and financial industry.