Exploring the lived Experience of the Concept of Touch in Purchasing Product Categories from Physical and Online Stores

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.