The Customer Hasn’t Paid. The Product Already Feels Like Theirs.

An ordinary Slinky and a lump of Playfoam produced opposite commercial lessons in experiments by marketing researchers Joann Peck and Suzanne Shu. People who handled the Slinky felt more ownership and valued it more. People who touched the unpleasant Playfoam also felt more ownership, but the bad sensation canceled the valuation gain. For any business selling something with weight, texture, temperature or resistance, touch is not decoration. It can make a product feel psychologically “mine” before checkout, yet expose weakness faster than copy can conceal it. The marketing term is haptic marketing—the use of touch and tactile imagination to shape judgment. It changes merchandising, packaging, video and digital commerce.

The moment an object becomes “mine”

Peck and Shu’s 2009 Journal of Consumer Research paper reported four studies built around a simple divide: some participants could touch an object; others could not. Across the studies, contact increased perceived ownership—the feeling that an object is “mine” without legal possession. When the touch experience was neutral or pleasant, that feeling also helped raise valuation.

This is related to the endowment effect, the tendency to value something more once it is owned. Haptic marketing can begin that process before a sale. A customer who lifts a bowl, tests a jacket’s weight or turns a tool in the hand is not only gathering specifications. The object has entered personal space and come under physical control.

The study also found a substitute when contact was impossible. Asking buyers to imagine taking an object home increased perceived ownership and valuation in the no-touch condition. Imagery added little when people had already handled the product. For online sellers, the implication is to help the buyer simulate possession where the missing physical encounter creates uncertainty.

The hand is also an instrument

Touch performs two jobs that marketers often confuse. It can create closeness, and it can provide evidence. Fabric reveals softness and drape. A switch reveals resistance. Packaging reveals temperature, firmness and weight. These are diagnostic cues because they help a customer judge the product itself.

Other cues can leak into judgment even when they should not. In four studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Aradhna Krishna and Maureen Morrin found that the firmness of a cup could affect evaluations of the water inside it. The effect was stronger among people lower in “need for touch,” a research term for how strongly someone prefers to use touch either to gather information or simply for sensory enjoyment. Experienced touch-seekers were less swayed by the irrelevant container cue.

That complication is why “let customers touch it” is not a universal growth tactic. A 2023 Psychology & Marketing meta-analysis by Wumei Liu, Feng Wu and Tahir Mumtaz Awan found a moderate positive effect of touch on consumer attitude. Product type, cultural uncertainty avoidance and physical versus imagined touch changed the result. Texture can confirm quality or contradict the photograph. A flimsy closure becomes more persuasive than the headline beside it.

A screen can borrow the body

The distance between physical and digital shopping is smaller than it looks. Adam Brasel and James Gips reported in the Journal of Consumer Psychology that touchscreen interaction increased psychological ownership and strengthened the endowment effect compared with indirect interfaces. The effect was stronger for haptically important products and when people used a device they owned. The finger touched glass, not the item, yet direct manipulation still changed the relationship.

Digital creative can go further by showing another body touch the object. Andrea Webb Luangrath, Joann Peck, William Hedgcock and Yixiang Xu documented a “vicarious haptic effect” in the Journal of Marketing Research. Across eight studies using images, animated images and virtual reality, watching an active hand touch a product increased psychological ownership and valuation. A hand merely present in the frame was not enough; it had to perform a meaningful touch, and a movement that did not help diagnose the product weakened the effect.

That turns a familiar product video into a more exact marketing instrument. A hand should compress the cushion, bend the sole, open the clasp or show the weight shifting into the palm. The action supplies information the viewer cannot collect directly while making the imagined interaction easier to inhabit.

For OrionPilot, the useful connection is coordination: the tactile promise introduced in a product demonstration should survive the store display, campaign language and measurement plan. The learning question is not simply whether the video earned views, but whether a purposeful touch scene changed qualified product exploration, saved items, sampling or purchase behavior.

Design the handoff between promise and proof

In a physical environment, haptic marketing starts with permission. Products meant to be evaluated should be reachable, stable and presented so handling feels obvious rather than socially risky. A sample can absorb wear while sealed inventory remains clean. Fragile, hygienic or personal products need controlled demonstration instead of indiscriminate contact. The objective is not maximum touching; it is the right touch for the decision.

Online, the closest equivalents are material-specific language, scale shown against a real hand, motion that reveals resistance and ownership imagery tied to use. “Soft” is weak if softness is the claim. Showing a thumb press into the surface and the material recover gives the adjective evidence. The same principle should shape testing: compare a purposeful haptic scene with a passive beauty shot, then measure behavior close to the product decision rather than treating attention alone as proof.

The commercial value of touch is therefore not mystical. It can transmit information, create psychological ownership and raise valuation, but only when the sensation supports the promise. The decisive moment often happens before checkout, when a customer turns an object over, tests its weight and notices that the price tag is still attached. That pause is not empty retail time. It is where a product begins to feel owned—and where the marketing claim meets the hand.