Can’t Touch This: Haptic Cues and Their Personality

For centuries, humans have been engaging their senses when assessing their surroundings. As consumers, haptic feel, visual cues, audio tunes, and other sensory aspects affect our perceptions and attitudes toward brands and purchasing behaviors. The sensory marketing literature argues that touch is the most influential sense of all sensory cues. However, scant research in the sensory marketing literature addresses haptic cues and how these cues affect brand attributes, such as brand personality. Therefore, this conceptual paper proposes a model of haptic cues and brand personality that identifies which haptic cue associates most with a brand personality dimension. In addition, need-for-touch is suggested as a moderator between the aforementioned relationships. While we cannot always touch products or may not have a high need for touch, determining which haptic cue relates most with a certain brand personality dimension provide much contribution to the sensory marketing and branding literature in determining sensory signatures for brands.