How that cup feels in your hand may affect how good that mineral water tastes, says a study from Rutgers School of Business at Camden, which examined the effects of touch on our sense of taste.

 

Research by Maureen Morrin, associate professor of marketing at Rutgers, and Aradhna Krishna, professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, examined the effects of how various degrees of cup firmness affected the perceived taste of mineral water by more than 1,000 men and women who were served samples of the same mineral water.

 

Morrin and Krishna studied how individuals with a high need for touch (NFT) versus a lower need for touch responded to the feel of the otherwise identical water cups. Consumers with a high NFT are the ones more likely to squeeze toilet paper or feel produce before purchasing. The researchers’ hypothesis at the start of the project, Morrin said in a public statement, maintained that those with high NFT would be most influenced by the way the cup felt in their hands.

 

Surprisingly, say the researchers, the opposite occurred. Consumers with a lower NFT were more likely to let the feel of the cup influence their perception of the taste of the mineral water. Higher NFT consumers were significantly less affected than their lower NFT peers when it came to the taste of the water. Lower NFT people were less likely to like the taste of the water when it was served in a more flexible cup, versus a sturdier one.

 

“That’s why research is so interesting,” Morrin stated publicly. “If you only always confirmed your hypotheses, it would be considerably less exciting a field.”

 

Her theory behind the unexpected outcome? “High-NFT shoppers appear to know when the information gained through touch should influence their decisions, such as when trying to buy a soft sweater or a lightweight computer, and when it should not, such as when tasting water served in a firm or flimsy plastic cup,” Morrin says.

 

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, specializes in the effects of the myriad cues that affect our buying decisions. Ariely was also surprised by the study’s outcome.

 

“The most interesting thing about the research is that lower NFT were more affected; you would expect that higher NFT would get more benefit from it, but it was actually the opposite. It is interesting that people were influenced by touch of the cup; that falls into the general effects of placebo and expectations,” he explains.

 

The general effect of expectations, Ariely says, is when, “you expect it to be good, it becomes good for all kinds of reasons,” including what the researchers called “nondiagnostic haptic cues”—those factors unrelated to product quality, such as the feel of a container.

 

When it comes to the lower NFT consumers, “Are these people so sensitive to touch that they get so much input, that they are more sensitive, and get much more out of it?” Ariely asks. “They then have a lower NFT.”

 

“Here is one way to think of it: consider people who have autism, for example. People with autism get too much input—they have a low need for input, and experience too much stimulation, everything for them is amplified,” he explains.

 

“Do people with a low NFT have that low need because they already get a lot of stimulation from everything? I suspect that could be what is going on here,” Ariely tells demo dirt.

 

“There are a million examples of how expectations influence experience,” he says. “We don’t know how to evaluate a lot of things; environmental cues tell us how to react; if we are prepared for a better experience and everything is much, much better.” A high quality cup, then, creates an expectation that its contents will be of high quality as well.

 

“Understanding which people choose what level of stimulation is very interesting to focus on for future studies,” he adds.

 

The takeaway message of the research is that companies “should not skimp on the touch-related aspects of their products,” said Morrin. “Touch is an important part of the consumer experience—a benefit that should not be discounted simply because we don’t ordinarily consciously process that information.”