BC Study Shows Impact of Touchscreen on Shopping Behavior

Screen Shot 2013-12-18 at 10.27.53 AMBy Sean Hennessey (Boston College Chronicle)

A new study from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management finds that consumers using touchscreen devices to shopping may have looser purse strings than those using lap or desktop computers.

Why? BC researchers found that since touching an object produces a feeling of ownership, and if you feel like you already own something, you’re more likely to buy it.

“This is the first evidence that we know of exploring this endowment effect via touchscreen interface,” Associate Professor of Marketing Stevan Adam Brasel  told the BC Chronicle. “When we reach out to grab a product in the real world, we’ll hold the product in one hand and touch the product with the other hand. So the act of doing that on a tablet mimics our real-world experience much better than when we’re operating a mouse that in turn moves a pointer that is on some unconnected screen we’re not even holding.“

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