No-touch Condition Research Articles

Tactile Stimulation and Consumer Response

Tactile behavior is a basic communication form as well as an expression of interpersonal involvement. This article presents three studies offering evidence for the positive role of casual interpersonal touch on consumer behavior. More specifically, it provides initial support for the view that tactile stimulation in various consumer behavior situations enhances the positive feeling for and evaluation of both the external stimuli and the touching source. Further, customers touched by a requester tend to comply more than customers in no-touch conditions. Implications for consumer behavior theory and research are discussed.

The Midas Touch

The present study examined the effects of two types of touch in a controlled but natural setting, a restaurant. Waitresses briefly touched customers either on the hand or the shoulder as they were returning change. Customers' reactions were assessed by a restaurant survey and a novel behavioral measure, the tip expressed as a percentage of the bill. The tipping rate for the two types of touch did not differ from each other and did not differ according to the customer's gender. Both tipping rates were significantly larger than a control, no-touch condition. There were no touch effects on ratings of the waitress, the restaurant's atmosphere, or the dining experience. It was concluded that touch effects can occur without awareness, and that males will not react more negatively to touch than females when the touch is unobtrusive or free of status and dependency connotations.

"Touch Me, Like Me": Testing an Encounter Group Assumption

An experiment to test an encounter group assumption that touching increases interpersonal attraction was conducted. Twenty-one college women were randomly assigned to a touch or no-touch condition. In the touch condition the subject was paired with an experimental accomplice who joined her in three bogus ESP experiments, the last of which involved mutual touching for 11o seconds. The no-touch condition was identical, save touching. Subjects then evaluated the experimental accomplice on four dimensions. A comparison of total evaluation scores verified the hypothesis: subjects who touched the accomplice perceived her as a more attractive person than those who did not touch her.