The Impact Of Online Model Presentation On Haptic Perception

The consulting group iResearch indicates in its2013year report that apparel sale,which accounts for27percent of total network sale, has become the largest category.However, the return rate of buying clothes online is high and there’re still consumerswho would drop purchase. The biggest cause of the above phenomena is that tactilesenses of those consumers are not satisfied. More and more garment enterprisesenhance the sensation of thermal resistance, texture, hardness and stretch of theirclothes by improving model’s demonstrative way. In this paper, we theoreticallyexplore the mechanism how vision compensates for tactile sensation, and in practicewe discuss the way how enterprises raise their selling efficiency by a better display ofthe clothes quality by model.The study is carried on through three correlated experiments which are designedto confirm the assumptions proposed in the theoretical summary. Experiment Iexplores the effects of model’s facial expression and garment color on consumers’perception of thermal resistance, with the imagery ability as an adjustment.Experiment II explores the impact of clothing material and gender of model onconsumers’ perception of texture and hardness of the clothes, with the need for touchsensation of each consumer as a regulation. Experiment III explore s the impress ofclothing material and mannequins’ figure on consumers’ perception about the softnessand elasticity of the clothes, while consumers’ dirven for thinness is taken into toadjust the result.Got first-hand data by questionnaires, interviews and scenario simulation, weused One-way ANOVA analysis of variance and hierarchical multiple regression inSPSS and drew several conclusions below. First, consumers’ perception of warmthshows a significant difference between different facial expressions of the model andgarment colors. Warm-toned clothes or happier facial expressions of model indicateconsumers’ higher perception of warmth. And consumers’ imagery ability can adjustthe impact of color on the perception of warmth. Second, consumers’ perception oftexture and hardness of the clothes shows a significant difference between differentclothing materials and genders of model. Also, there’s an interaction between theways how clothing materials and gender of model affect tactile sensations. Jeansindicates higher perception of texture and hardness than silks, while female model indicates softer feeling than male. Besides, consumers’ need for touch sensationadjusts the impact mentioned above. Third, consumers’ feeling about the elasticity,softness of the clothes shows a notable difference impact between different figures ofmodel and clothing materials. The discrepancy of consumers’ feeling about theelasticity and softness between jeans and cotton trousers is significant. A thin modelindicates much lower perception of elasticity and softness of the clothes than a plumpone. Consumers’ dirven for thinness also affects their feeling about the elasticity andsoftness of the clothes. Those who have higher intentions feel more strongly.