In 2021, I published a peer-reviewed study with Prof. Figen Yıldırım in the International Journal of Commerce and Finance examining a question that sits right at the intersection of UX design and commercial outcomes: does customer experience actually drive purchase intention and re-visit intention in e-commerce? We surveyed 358 Amazon.com.tr shoppers to find out.
The short answer is yes — and the effect sizes are substantial. Customer experience explained 55% of the variance in purchase intention and 56% of the variance in re-visit intention. But the more interesting findings are in the detail: which dimensions of experience drive which outcomes, and one dimension that turned out not to matter at all for repeat visits.
This is the first of a three-part series unpacking that research. This part covers the study itself, the methodology, and the headline findings.
Why This Research Mattered
The literature on customer experience was well developed, but with a significant gap. Studies examining the effect of customer experience on purchase intention were limited, and studies examining its effect on re-visit intention were almost non-existent in an e-commerce context. The handful of studies that did examine re-visit intention were focused on physical places — hotels, restaurants, holiday destinations.
This mattered because the theoretical case for customer experience was already strong. Berry, Carbone and Haeckel established that customer experience spans the entire journey from purchase decision to delivery. Pine and Gilmore argued that customers find “successful experiences” unique, memorable, and sustainable. Kamaladevi found that higher customer experience results in more frequent shopping visits, larger budget shares, and higher profits. But nobody had rigorously tested whether this held for a user’s intention to return to an e-commerce website.
The Research Model and Hypotheses
We tested three hypotheses:
- H1: Customer experience has a positive and significant effect on purchase intention.
- H2: Customer experience has a positive and significant effect on re-visit intention.
- H3: Purchase intention has a positive and significant effect on re-visit intention.
Crucially, we didn’t treat customer experience as a single monolithic construct. Following Sönmezay’s customer experience scale, we broke it into four measurable dimensions: security, interface, image, and trust. This decomposition is what makes the findings actionable for designers rather than merely interesting for academics.
Methodology
Data was collected through an online survey open between 20 December 2020 and 18 January 2021, yielding 358 completed responses. All scales used five-point Likert items (“1 = strongly disagree” to “5 = strongly agree”), and analysis was performed in SPSS.
The instruments were:
- Customer Experience Scale — 16 items across four dimensions, adapted from Sönmezay (2019).
- Re-Visit Intention Scale — 3 items, single dimension, adapted from Han and Kim (2010).
- Purchase Intention Scale — 3 items, single dimension, adapted from Chang and Chen (2008).
All scales proved highly reliable, with Cronbach’s Alpha values well above the 0.70 threshold: the full Customer Experience Scale reached 0.924, Re-Visit Intention 0.912, and Purchase Intention 0.903. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the factor structures held against the collected data, with all goodness-of-fit criteria acceptable (CFI and TLI above 0.95, RMSEA within range).
The sample skewed toward educated, working-age professionals: 53.91% held an undergraduate degree, a further 22.07% held postgraduate qualifications, and the largest age group was 25–34 (38.83%). 59.78% of participants were male.
The Headline Findings
Customer experience strongly drives purchase intention (H1 accepted)
All four dimensions of customer experience had positive, significant effects on purchase intention (F = 111.44; p < 0.01), and the model explained 55% of the variance in purchase intention. The dimensions ranked by strength of effect:
- Image (β = 0.381) — the strongest driver
- Trust (β = 0.274)
- Security (β = 0.190)
- Interface (β = 0.128)
Customer experience drives re-visit intention — but security doesn’t (H2 partially accepted)
This was the most surprising result. Three of the four dimensions had positive, significant effects on re-visit intention (F = 116.18; p < 0.01), explaining 56% of the variance. But the security dimension showed no significant effect (β = 0.073; p > 0.05).
- Image (β = 0.420) — again the strongest
- Trust (β = 0.345)
- Interface (β = 0.214) — notably stronger here than for purchase intention
- Security (β = 0.073) — not significant
I unpack why this happened — and what it means for how you design an e-commerce experience — in Part 2 of this series.
Purchase intention powerfully drives re-visit intention (H3 accepted)
The strongest relationship in the entire study. Purchase intention had a substantial effect on re-visit intention (β = 0.930; F = 1087.19; p < 0.01), explaining 75% of the variance. The correlation between the two was 0.868 — the strongest in the correlation matrix.
Practically: someone who intends to buy is overwhelmingly likely to intend to come back. The two intentions are deeply intertwined, which means an experience optimised for one tends to serve the other.
What This Means
The conclusion is direct: as positive customer experience increases, so do both purchase intention and re-visit intention. This confirmed what the traditional-commerce literature had found — but extended it into e-commerce, and specifically to the previously unexamined question of returning to a website.
For anyone running an e-commerce operation, this establishes something important: customer experience isn’t a soft metric. It measurably explains more than half the variance in the two outcomes that determine commercial success. Design decisions about interface, brand image, trust signals, and security are commercial decisions.
The remaining two parts of this series take those findings apart. Part 2 examines what the interface, trust, and security findings mean for UX and UI design specifically. Part 3 covers the customer experience management implications for e-commerce operators and marketers.
Study Limitations
In the interests of intellectual honesty: this was a cross-sectional study with data collected from participants in Istanbul, so generalising the results requires replication in different samples. Different scales exist in the literature and could produce different results. The model didn’t include mediator or moderator effects, which a future study could usefully explore. And a longitudinal design would strengthen causal claims considerably.
Next: Part 2 — What the Data Says About Interface, Trust and Security →
This research was published as 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. Interested in applying evidence-based UX to your e-commerce product? Get in touch.