Traveler's path to online purchase

Define the customer's path to online purchase 

For me the customer path to online purchase is in realty the different stages from the moment the customer express an interest for a good or something intangible to the moment he has bought it.
It is therefore all the different stages between these two actions.

Representative image of an omnichannel experience 

What are the stages in the customer purchase path? How do customers decide to use which ones at different points of their journey?

Here are for me the different stages in the customer purchase path:

• Inspiration (or awareness) 
• Researching (or consideration) 
• Buying (or booking) 
• Experiencing 

Depending on the customer habits, and its personality, he will decide to use or unuse different stages.

For exemple, for some of us, inpiration can be directly linked to the buying moment, then there is the experience, and here again, some of us (it is more and more rare) will not share anything.



Depending on the point in their journey, the customer may decide to use different channels as follow:

• Inspiration (or awareness) : the need of buying a good is due to an add seen, TV program, radio, or social media. 
• Researching (or consideration) : before buying something most of customers are preferring to compare before buying. They're searching information thanks to online reviews in specialized websites or blogs. 
• Buying (or booking) : depending on the way the customer is purchasing he will do online purchase or it can be in-store. 
• Experiencing : after the purchase, while the customer is experiencing, some of them will review the good or the service online thanks to blogs or again specialized websites. 

Here is for me a good illustration of the customer's path to online purchase, also highlighting the different channels used thanks to a video presentation of the "IBM Omni-channel Order Management".

I hope you will enjoyed this presentation, have a wonderful day !