• The Effects of Temperature and Need for Touch on Variety-Seeking Behavior

Abstract

Consumers are inherently eager for novelty or change, and thus exhibit variety-seeking in their choice behavior. Consumers often use their hands to touch products and inspect haptic attributes (i.e., texture, weight, hardness, and temperature) prior to purchase. These physical experiences affect consumers’ variety-seeking behavior. Based on the perspective of embodied cognition, this study explores the effect of temperature on variety-seeking behavior. Two experimental studies were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Study 1 showed that low temperature led subjects to display greater variety seeking regardless of whether the temperature originated from the product or the indoor climate. The findings of Study 2 indicated that the effect of product temperature was moderated by individual differences in need for touch (NFT), because variety seeking was only affected by holding low-temperature products in individuals with a high NFT compared to those with a low NFT.

Keywords: Embodied Cognition, Temperature, Variety-Seeking behavior, Need for Touch