Why we like to touch: Consumers' tactile esthetic appreciation explained by a balanced combination of unity and variety in product designs

Tactile experiences are a pivotal part of consumer behavior and choice. However, very little is known about why consumers esthetically appreciate touching products. The principle of Unity-in-Variety, stating that consumers like to perceive variety but only when this variety is presented as a coherent whole, has been shown to partly explain consumers' esthetic appreciation in the visual domain. We theorize that the psychological mechanisms underlying the esthetic principle of Unity-in-Variety are modality-independent, and therefore that this principle also applies to consumers' tactile esthetic appreciation. Across three studies, using existing products and novel 3D printed product designs systematically manipulated along the perceptual dimensions of unity and variety, we show that both unity and variety independently contribute to tactile esthetic appreciation. Furthermore, because unity and variety are inherently partial opposites, esthetic appreciation of products is highest when both unity and variety are simultaneously maximized.