Dollars and sense: Study says if you touch it, you buy it

So I wonder if this explains not only why I tend to come out of certain chain stores with about five times the amount of merchandise I went to buy in the first place, but why I tend to buy the stuff I fondle while shopping?

I refer to a new study chronicled in a story on the

Science Daily website, sciencedaily.com. The study reveals that “the things we touch while shopping can affect what we buy.”

This study was conducted by Zachary Estes of the Bocconi University Department of Marketing in Milan, Italy, and Mathias Streicher of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. The men published “Touch and Go: Merely Grasping a Product Facilitates Brand Perception and Choice” in

Applied Cognitive Psychology.

What they’d found: Blindfolded subjects told to clutch a familiar object “are then quicker in recognizing the brand name of the product when it slowly appears on a screen, include more frequently the product in a list of brands of the same category, and choose more often that product among others as a reward for having participated in the experiment.” The story used the distinctive Coca-Cola bottle as a for-instance. If these folks were handed an unidentified bottle of Coke while blindfolded, they’d holler out “Hey, that’s Coke,” when the bottle began to appear onscreen. If they were asked to list soft-drink brands, they’d submit “Coke!” At the end of the experiment, they’d go to a restaurant, soda fountain or vending machine and have a Coke.

The men also conducted a related study, “Multisensory Interaction in Product Choice: Grasping a Product Affects Choice of Other Seen Products,” whose results were published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. They found that if you’re holding an object while shopping, you’re likely to visually process and choose to buy a product of similar size and shape. Clutching that rectangular cellphone? No wonder you bought the package of cream cheese, the sponge, the boxed writing pen set or … well, no wonder that one company in Minnesota has invented a gun that folds up like a cellphone.

One of two “caveats” mentioned: If merchandise is displaced in an overcrowded setting, your hands have an even bigger influence than your eyes on what you buy. Touch, or “tactile perception,” is that important.

“These results have direct implications for product and package designers and marketing managers,” Estes is quoted. No stuff, Sherlock.

I can see it now:

■ The neighborhood grocery store or big-box discount store is going to take on the look of a beach town souvenir shop. Even the most mundane of products are going to start showing up in cray-crayshapes and packages sporting weird angles and made to feel like faux fur or human skin in order to get people to identify with the brand.

■ Products whose advertisers already brag about their tactile attraction are going to play up the touchy-feeliness of their products even more. In the old Charmin bathroom tissue commercials, grocer Mr. Whipple would bark at customers, “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!” If Mr. Whipple’s character is ever resurrected, he will urge us to violate the heck out of the Charmin. But it won’t be just bathroom tissue or cotton, the “fabric of our lives.” We’ll be hearing “Doesn’t this hunting rifle feel soft in your hands?” “Don’t just kick those tires … touch them!” and “Just let those grains of cat-box litter trickle through your fingers!” ■ Even more things are going to come out shaped like cellphones. Jewelry pieces. Soup cans. Coffee mugs and overnight luggage. Underwear.

The other caveat brought forth in the Science Daily article? The whole “you touch-a, you’ll want to buy-a” thing depends on how much you like touchy-feeliness. If you aren’t the touching type, it’s less likely that your purchases will be driven by touch. Which probably means cold, distant types and germophobes probably have more money than the rest of us.

This study leads me to the overwhelming conclusion that manufacturers and Madison Avenue types probably already knew without the study that they have more control over consumers than we thought they did.

Next to be published: the study that reveals that if you break an item while shopping, it’s more likely that you’ll have to pay for it.