Visuo-Haptic Integration Increases Purchase Intentions via Processing Fluency

Consumers often touch products before reaching purchase decisions. However, no study thus far has conclusively clarified whether grasping products for a brief duration promotes purchase intentions. Recent neuroscience studies suggest that vision and touch are fundamentally integrated because both senses serve similar behavioral functions. Here, we posit that briefly viewing and touching a product drives purchase intentions through increases in processing fluency from visuo-haptic integration. We test our assertion in one pretest and one experiment and compare it against competing explanations in a multiple mediation model. We found that brief touches increased product evaluations and purchase intentions via processing fluency.