Touching through your eyes: The role of cognitive compensation for touch in a non-touch commercial channel

Touching through your eyes...is it possible? Touch is a form of direct experience that individuals use to examine and evaluate objects. In recent years, the increase in use of digital technologies for commercial purposes has made marketing researchers and managers to ask how is it possible for consumers to obtain tactile information in non-touch commercial channels. However, scant research has addressed the question of how consumers compensate the lack of tactile information in non-touch shopping channels. Therefore, based on the Dual Coding Theory, this dissertation proposes a model that will contribute to the understanding of the cognitive mechanism of compensation for touch. The model presented is a moderated mediation that explains that non-verbal product presentation formats (photos and videos) provide more compensation for touch than verbal presentation formats (written descriptions); yet, this relationship is moderated by the individual’s NFT. Also, the model explains that more compensation for touch produces better product evaluations and higher purchase intentions. The main contribution of this dissertation is that it provides a theoretical framework to previous contributions on compensation for touch that explains the cognitive process that allows for this compensation.