THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH VERSUS NON-TOUCH INTERFACES ON ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The past few years have witnessed that consumers’ online shopping has gradually shifted from non-touch interfaces (e.g., desktops with a mouse) to touch interfaces (e.g., iPads). Recent studies have shown that the mere change of the interface can influence online shopping experiences because of the different response modes. However, there are still insufficient investigations on how the tactile activities by using the two interfaces influence users’ cognitive processing of the online content. I conduct two studies by using multiple methods to address this gap. The first study seeks to examine the cross-modality effect of product orientation (i.e., orienting a product to one’s dominant hand) and computer interface. The second study attempts to examine how touch versus non-touch computer interfaces influence the ways that people construe online content. Overall, the findings offer insightful implications for the human-computer interaction literature and the practice of marketing strategies based on different interactive interfaces.