# Touch Matters: The Impact of Physical Contact on Haptic Product Perception in Virtual Reality
## 5 Conclusions  
In summary, our study ran an intrasubject experiment with a sample of 33 young people who viewed a piece of furniture presented in the middle of a white-walled room by five different means and in alternating orders to evaluate it on a semantic scale with 12 bipolar pairs. Each participant indicated their purchase intention and evaluated the sense of presence that they perceived in each mean. The results appear to indicate that physical characteristics related to comfort and weight were differently perceived depending on how the product was presented. The product obtained a higher score when presented in the means that allowed coming into physical contact with the product. We also observed that the product was generally liked more when presented in VR means that allowed it to be touched (VRPH) than in the other presentation means. Our results seemed to indicate that users perceived a greater sense of presence in those means that combined haptic and visual stimuli, which falls in line with previous works. Finally, our study was unable to determine that the presentation means significantly influenced users' purchase intention, although the latter was slightly higher when the product was presented in those means allowing physical contact. Thus, we conclude that when a material product with high haptic importance (in this case, a chair) is presented, the means that allow it to be touched to elicit a greater sense of presence may more positively impact evaluations of haptic characteristics such as comfort and weight. This may explain why, in general, users liked this product more when presented in these means. These findings, interpreted with caution, may be useful and could be considered by retailers when choosing appropriate means of presenting certain products so that the means distort the perception of the attributes as little as possible. Similarly, they could guide designers to include VRPH in the presentation and evaluation process of some haptic products in the prototyping phases, allowing for a more complete user experience. Nonetheless, this study has two limitations. The first relates to the number of products evaluated. Although it is normal to include the evaluation of a single product [64; 65; 66] in studies of this type, it would be desirable in the future to compare these results with those that would be obtained by presenting other furniture products with equivalent haptic properties, such as other models of chairs, stools, or similar seating products. This would allow more generalizable conclusions to be drawn. Another limitation is the sample used,limited in this case to young people with a very homogeneous academic background. In this case, the results may not apply to other populations, such as older people or people with different educational backgrounds. Therefore, they should be treated with caution. Despite these limitations, this work indicates advances in understanding the role that physical contact with a product plays in evaluating its characteristics and purchase intention when the product is presented in different means that elicit a greater or lesser sense of presence. Future research directions are to test other products from different categories with a high propensity to be touched during normal use, such as clothing (gloves or shoes) or hand tools, to compare the results with those obtained in this study. By measuring the impact of means that elicit a greater or lesser sense of presence on evaluations of other haptic features, such as texture or temperature, the results could be generalized or not to other product categories. Another interesting area for the development of future studies is the analysis of the impact that active haptic technology, which allows for more dynamic and realistic tactile interactions, could have on product evaluation. Conceptualization, [PERSON], F.F. and M.C. ; methodology, F.F., J.G., M.C. and C.G. ; software, C.G.-G. and M.C. ; validation, M.C. ; formal analysis, M.C. ; investigation, [PERSON], F.F., M.C.