میثم امین زاده واحدی

This research aims to explore the impact of touch concepts and tactile descriptive adjectives on customers' purchase intentions in both physical and online shopping environments. While some products can be accurately perceived through digital media, others may require a tactile experience. In today's market, products are available through virtual and physical stores, where the sense of touch or tactile alternatives plays a crucial role. The study utilized a correlational method and focused on customers of online and physical stores in Tehran. A total of 332 participants were randomly selected from both populations, and data was collected through questionnaires and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that six key factors related to touch concepts, such as product understanding, physical touch, virtual touch, touch experiences, customer's need for touch, and tactile perceptions, positively and significantly influence customers' purchase intentions. A comparison of the coefficients between the two groups revealed that product understanding and touch experiences were similar, while physical touch and customer's need for touch were more pronounced in physical store customers, and virtual touch and tactile perceptions were more prominent in online customers. This study sheds light on the importance of product touch in both online and physical retail settings for enhancing customer satisfaction.

The touch of the product plays an important role in the final decision of the customer when purchasing from physical and online retail, and the sensations that come to be enjoyed through touch enable them to experience the product from all angles. Therefore, considering the importance of touch, this research has investigated the lived experience of touching the product from the point of view of customers of physical and online stores. The following article is done with qualitative method and phenomenological paradigm. The research community is made up of electronic and clothing buyers from online and physical stores: Technolife, Adak, Havadar and Happyland in Tehran, and through semi-structured interviews, evidence was collected based on the purposeful sampling method. The interviews continued until reaching the theoretical saturation, and in this research, the interviews reached saturation with 15 people. Based on the extracted results, the main themes include; Product perception is physical touch, virtual touch, touch experiences, need for touch and touch perceptions. According to the results, managers of physical and online stores should provide conditions (such as the use of modern technologies) that touch and contact with the product happen to both groups of online and physical buyers so that they can buy products based on their needs and wants, and also this research can pave the way for the development of touch literature for researchers.