Customer responses to service providers' touch: A meta-analysis

Touch is a critical part of many consumer experiences (e.g., shaking hands with a salesperson or a calming touch from a healthcare provider). In this paper, we synthesize the existing research on service providers' initiated touch during their interactions with customers. We use meta-analysis to estimate the effect of touch across eight outcome categories relating to customer behavior and evaluations. Our analysis includes 55 effects extracted from 37 studies published from 1979 to 2019 with a total of 6,323 subjects. We use between-study characteristics to explore potential moderators of the touch effect. Overall, we find service providers' touch to have a moderately strong and positive effect on customers. The touch effect appears to be significantly stronger in service settings than retail settings and is robust across a variety of between-study factors.