 The touchy issue of produce: Need for touch in online grocery retailingFrauke Kühn, Marcel Lichters and Nina Krey Journal of Business Research, 2020, vol. 117, issue C, 244-255 Abstract: Online grocery retailing lags behind other product categories in e-commerce. This article focuses on consumers’ need for touch (NFT) as a psychological explanation for this issue. In two studies, consumers rate their perception of produce offered in an online shop. Specifically, consumers assess quality concerns, affective response, and willingness to pay (WTP) in offline versus online retail contexts. Results demonstrate that high-NFT consumers express higher quality concerns and lower affective response to online offered produce. This negative influence of NFT is stronger if consumers use indirect compared to direct touch interfaces. Further, NFT influences WTP difference between offline and online offered produce. Online retailers therefore need to carefully manage quality concerns and negative perceptions that high-NFT consumers express during online produce shopping. A third study proposes a solution through online videos as visual design features. Displaying haptic evaluations of high-touch diagnostic produce by other consumers successfully negates NFT’s adverse influences. Keywords: Need for touch (NFT); Online retailing; Online grocery shopping; Produce; Touch interface; PLS-SEM (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:117:y:2020:i:c:p:244-255 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.05.017 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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