This is Part 3, the final part of a series on my published research into customer experience in e-commerce. Part 1 covered the study; Part 2 examined what it means for interface design. This part addresses the operational question: if customer experience explains more than half the variance in whether people buy and return, how should you actually manage it?
Why Customer Experience Is a Commercial Metric, Not a Soft One
The case for treating CX as a first-order business concern isn’t sentimental — it’s empirical. Our research found customer experience explained 55% of the variance in purchase intention and 56% in re-visit intention. Both are direct antecedents of revenue.
This sits within a substantial literature. Kamaladevi found higher customer experience results in more frequent shopping visits, larger budget shares, and higher profits. Berry and Carbone argued that loyal customers arise from feelings about the total customer experience rather than rational thoughts about products and services. Badgett and colleagues found customers are more likely to repeat purchases and spread word of mouth when they have a good experience. Shaw and Ivens positioned customer experience as a source of long-term competitive advantage.
Moore put it most sharply: business success lies not only in the perceived value of products and services, but in the perceived value of the experience the business provides.
The Experience Doesn’t Start or End at Checkout
One of the most consequential insights from the literature we reviewed: customer experience begins with the customer’s decision to purchase and continues until the product or service is delivered. It spans the entire arc, not just the moments on your website.
This has a direct operational implication. In our study’s conclusion, we noted that in addition to website design and features, the information and services a company provides before, during and after the sale have an impact on customer experience. An online retailer that designs a beautiful checkout but handles delivery communications poorly is degrading the same construct that drives repeat purchase.
Rose and colleagues distinguish two components of online experience: the cognitive experience — linked to thinking and conscious mental processes — and the emotional experience, which includes the moods, feelings and emotions formed during the interaction. Both are formed continuously across every touchpoint, and both persist in memory. You are managing an accumulated impression, not a series of isolated interactions.
Where to Invest, According to the Data
The regression coefficients from our study give a rough priority ordering for where CX investment produces returns.
- Brand image is the single heaviest lever (β = 0.381 for purchase, 0.420 for re-visit). It outweighed every other dimension on both outcomes. This is where consistency across every touchpoint matters most — Joseph called this the “experience effect,” where the essence of good marketing is creating a consistent brand experience in every consumer interaction.
- Trust is second, and grows in importance for retention (β = 0.274 → 0.345). Trust is built through reliability: accurate delivery estimates, honest stock information, responsive support, transparent pricing.
- Interface quality is a retention multiplier (β = 0.128 → 0.214). Its effect grows substantially when predicting whether someone comes back. Underinvesting here is a retention problem disguised as a design problem.
- Security is an acquisition threshold, not an ongoing driver (β = 0.190 → 0.073, non-significant). Get it right and make it visible for first-time buyers. Beyond that, it stops contributing.
The Purchase-Retention Flywheel
The strongest single relationship in the entire study was between purchase intention and re-visit intention (β = 0.930, explaining 75% of variance). This is worth dwelling on, because it reframes the acquisition-versus-retention debate.
Kotler observed that a positive customer experience increases the willingness of consumers to shop and repurchase online. Ibzan and colleagues found a positive relationship between positive experience and repurchase tendency. Our data quantifies it: the same experience investments that drive a first purchase overwhelmingly drive the intention to return. These aren’t competing budgets. Optimising the experience serves both.
Noyan and Şimşek noted that retaining customers by allowing them to visit again is a key feature for business profitability — and Patterson and Spreng identified why this shifts over time. Before purchase, external factors like price, brand image and communication have a higher effect. After purchase, those external factors lose their force, and consumers build their decisions on their own satisfaction assessments. The experience you deliver is what they assess.
Practical Recommendations for E-commerce Operators
- Measure experience by dimension, not as a single score. An aggregate NPS tells you little. Security, interface, image and trust move different outcomes and need separate measurement.
- Audit the full journey, not just the site. Pre-sale information, during-sale communication, and post-sale service all form the experience that drives re-visit intention.
- Treat design as revenue infrastructure. Interface quality has a measurable, quantified effect on both buying and returning. Build the business case on both.
- Invest in brand consistency across every touchpoint. Image was the strongest driver on both outcomes, and it’s built cumulatively.
- Don’t over-index on security messaging for returning customers. It’s a threshold, cleared once, contributing nothing afterward.
As we concluded in the paper: it would be beneficial for online shopping site managers who want to gain competitive advantage and increase profitability to design their websites as the literature specifies — and for companies wanting to bring the customer experience to a genuinely “great” level, to reconsider the information and services they offer before, during and after sales through a customer experience management lens.
Closing the Loop
This series began with a research question and ends with an operational discipline. The finding that customer experience explains over half the variance in both purchase and re-visit intention isn’t an argument for caring about design in the abstract. It’s an argument for treating experience as measurable, decomposable, and manageable — with each dimension understood for what it actually does.
Previous: ← Part 2 — Interface, Trust and the Security Surprise · Back to: Part 1 — The Study
Based on Meriç, G. & Yıldırım, F. (2021), “The Role of Customer Experience for Re-Visit and Purchase Intention: A Case Study of Amazon,” International Journal of Commerce and Finance, Vol. 7, Issue 1, 92–108. Working on customer experience for an e-commerce business? Get in touch.