Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Tactile Impressions: A Study Using Smartphone Covers

This study examines in what way tactile impressions affect consumers’ willingness to pay for a product. We used a sample of 139 students and staff from a large university in Japan. Participants, who are also consumers of smartphone covers, were asked to share their willingness to pay for smartphone covers with four types of surface textures (A, B, C, and D) when the reference smartphone cover price was either 100 yen or 1,000 yen (1000 yen = 7.89 EUR). The smartphone covers were differentiated by surface smoothness, height, slipperiness, dampness, granularity, stickiness, and dryness. The results showed that respondents were willing to pay a premium for most of the textures. Furthermore, our study found that consumers’ willingness to pay for a surface texture depends on demographic and socio-economic features. This study’s results provide preliminary evidence on the value of tactile impressions, providing a foundation for more comprehensive studies in the future.