Abstract
There has been a great deal of research investigating intrinsic/extrinsic cues and their influences on consumer perception and purchasing decisions at points of sale, product usage, and consumption. Consumers create expectations toward a food product through sensory information extracted from its surface (intrinsic cues) or packaging (extrinsic cues) at retail stores. Packaging is one of the important extrinsic cues that can modulate consumer perception, liking, and decision making of a product. For example, handling a product packaging during consumption, even just touching the packaging while opening or holding it during consumption, may result in a consumer expectation of the package content. Although hand-feel touch cues are an integral part of the food consumption experience, as can be observed in such an instance, little has been known about their influences on consumer perception, acceptability, and purchase behavior of food products. This review therefore provided a better understanding about hand-feel touch cues and their influences in the context of food and beverage experience with a focus on (1) an overview of touch as a sensory modality, (2) factors influencing hand-feel perception, (3) influences of hand-feel touch cues on the perception of other sensory modalities, and (4) the effects of hand-feel touch cues on emotional responses and purchase behavior.
Highlights
Consumer perception and liking of a product are affected by both intrinsic and extrinsic cues [1,2,3,4]
For fruits and vegetables typically presented without any packaging at retail stores, their sensory attributes such as appearance, aroma, and surface texture play an important role in consumer perception and liking, as well as purchase behavior during the point of sale
Haptic perception, including kinesthetic located in her right fingers, while she perceives sensations of the container from cutaneous receptors perception, can be more involved than tactile perception in the hand-feel touch placed in her left hand
Summary
Consumer perception and liking of a product are affected by both intrinsic (i.e., product-specific attributes such as sensory properties of a product) and extrinsic (i.e., external attributes that can be manipulated without intrinsically changing the product) cues [1,2,3,4]. Sense of touch plays an important role in consumer perception, evaluation, and decision making of a product during the point-of-sale transaction, product usage, and product consumption. Because of this role, consumers are more likely to prefer products when retailers allow them to appraise the products using their hands [11]. Since a sense of touch has historically provided a means of communication of positive or negative emotions [15,16], it is not surprising that touch cues derived or perceived from a food product or its packaging can elicit emotional responses when consumers explore or consume the product. Background and knowledge gathered from this review will emphasize the importance of hand-feel touch cues on consumer perception and behavior during such an experience
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