Lift It or Not: The Influence of Haptic Weight Information on Product Evaluations

In retail settings, consumers often touch or hold products in their hand enabling them to register products’ weights. While weight is an important attribute for some products, it does not provide diagnostic information for evaluating many products. This research examines whether registering a product’s weight when weight is a non-diagnostic attribute changes the product evaluation. Relying on sensory marketing and an affect-as-information account, we show that people perceive a product with a higher relative weight as more valuable, and they are willing to pay more for it. This effect happens because experiencing a product’s relative heaviness activates positive affective reaction toward the product and this positive affective reaction in turn mediates the effect of weight on willingness to pay. We also show that the effect of weight on perceived value of a product attenuates for novice consumers.