Master's thesis 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Astrid Vandecandelaere 2018 
1 
Lappeenranta University of Technology 
School of Business and Management 
MIMM program in double degree with SKEMA 
 
 
 
 
 
Astrid Vandecandelaere 
"The impact of user experience on customer purchase 
intention in a highly competitive market?" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Master’s thesis, 2018 
Olli Kuivalainen & Peter Spier 
 
2 
Abstract: 
Astrid Vandecandelaere 
The impact of user experience on customer purchase intention in a highly competitive market? 
Master’s thesis 
2018 
Lappeenranta University of Technology  
School of Business and Management 
Business Administration 
MIMM program double degree with SKEMA 
75 pages, 12 charts and 4 tables 
Olli Kuivalainen & Peter Spier 
 
 
With the help of previous researches and study, the thesis questions the influence of user 
experience on customers, from the decision process to the purchase intention. The focus is set 
on high competitivity markets are they are indicated to highlight such capacities. In this 
research the case studies exploit the case of a price comparator and its potential to develop 
user experience to gain market share on the French online E-tourism bargain market. 
3 
List of tables 
1. Pre-literature review reference summary table  
2. Agencies customer demographic data table 
3. French E-Tourism Bargain Market elements table 
4. Final quantitative research question result comparison table  
 
 
List of charts 
1. Customer decision process representation 
2. Peter Morville’s honeycomb graph 
3. Progression of economic value graph 
4. Progression of economic value Starbucks case study graph 
5. Data analysis, Chart 1: Gender 
6. Data analysis, Chart 2: Age group 
7. Data analysis, Chart 3: Socio-economic status 
8. Data analysis, Chart 4: Travel preferences 
9. Data analysis, Chart 5: Travel preferences 
10. Data analysis, Chart 6: Travel preferences 
11. Data analysis, Chart 7: Purchase barriers 
12. Data analysis, Chart 8: Website layout and safety 
  
4 
 
Table of content 
Introduction 6 
Background 6 
Preliminary research on User experience 6 
Research relevance 7 
Preliminary Literature review 8 
Theoretical Framework 9 
Definitions and delimitations 10 
Définitions 10 
User experience 10 
The purchase decision process 11 
The terms of a highly competitive market 11 
Délimitations 12 
The empirical context 13 
Research questions 13 
Research Methodology 14 
Academical research 14 
Empirical research 14 
Qualitative research 15 
Quantitative research methods 15 
Methodology relevance 15 
Structure of the study 16 
Literature review 17 
The decision process and purchase decision 26 
The decision process, how a customer identifies and organises its needs and priorities. 26 
Online consumer behavior and purchase intention 27 
The impact of user experience on the customer and its decision process. 28 
Reminder of users experience definition and delimitation 29 
User experiences influence on the customers and it’s decision abilities 30 
Demonstration of the influence of user experience on purchase intention 31 
Highly competitive market, how it impacts purchase decisions 33 
Demonstration of user experiences potential to be a differentiation factor 34 
How user experience proves to be a key factor in a competitive market 36 
The mobile shopping phenomenon 37 
Research design and methods 39 
Research context 39 
The market 39 
The company 40 
The parameters to take into consideration 41 
Data collection methods 41 
Data analysis methods 42 
Reliability and validity 43 
Findings 44 
Quantitative research and results exposé 45 
User experience potential for the E-tourism industry and Easyvoyage 58 
Hypothesis 1: The lack of attention to user experience can be a serious drawback for a 
business development, preventing potential customers to become active customers 58 
Hypothesis 2: In certain circumstances, user experience could push potential customers to 
neglect the absence of information the doubtfulness of a given information 58 
Hypothesis 3: User experience can push customer to go against there preset priorities in a 
purchase decision 59 
5 
Discussion and Conclusions 61 
Theoretical contributions 61 
Validation of the effect of user experiences influence on a customer decision process and 
purchase intention 63 
Validation of the notion of user experience as a differentiation factor 63 
Introduction of user experiences effectiveness in a highly competitive market 63 
Practical implications 64 
The challenges of user experience strategy 64 
User experience as a low investment development strategy 65 
User experience is industry sensitive 65 
Easyvoyage has a potential to grow in its markets 66 
Limitations and future research 66 
Limitations 66 
The population 67 
research a less specific market 67 
Further research 68 
 
  
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1. Introduction 
1.1. Background 
1.1.1. Preliminary research on User experience 
Researches such as “Analysis of usability factors affecting purchase intention in online e-
commerce sites “by R A Perdana and A Suzianti suggest that user experience does have an 
impact on potential customers purchase decision, that it is necessary to orientate and push the 
customer to a purchase decision specifically in an online contest. Moreover, the paper implies 
that different aspects of user experience impact more or less the consumer depending on the 
industry, the consumers sensibility and on the consumer base target. 
This research is focused on digital marketing and online user experience, however many 
online business articles mentioned phygital marketing, which is using both physical and 
digital marketing in one strategy meaning that these two fields of marketing which are often 
strategically separated are being put together to implement a homogenous strategy. Phygital 
marketing is a relatively new concept in marketing, it is nonetheless an import part of digital 
marketing which is why it should be considered during the background research. To provide 
as much foundation to the research as possible, it is wise to include research on offline user 
experience since we will see in the development that although different, digital and online 
marketing are tied. (Perdana & Suzianti, 2014) 
In their research on User Experience and buying intention Giuseppe Fedele, Mario Fedriga, 
Silvano Zanuso, Simon Mastrangelo and Francesco Di Nocera use the Treadmill user 
experience as a phygital case study. On one hand, this research also highlights the impact of 
user experience on a potential customer buying intentions. On a second hand it also 
emphasises the idea that the impact of digital and physical user experience doesn’t always 
have equal weight in the customers decision choice. Moreover, we understand that depending 
on the type of product the digital or physical user experience doesn’t necessarily impact the 
decision-making process significantly enough to say that it is determinant in the purchase 
decision. Other similar researches and studies have shown that, in cases of phygital strategies 
or digital strategies the concern physical goods, the digital user experience isn’t critical to the 
customers purchase decision. In contrary, other researches and cases studies, around 
industries that have a strong online presence, tilt in favour of the theory in which User 
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experience would be important to purchase decisions. (Fedele, Fedriga, Zanuso, Mastrangelo 
& Di Nocera, 2016) 
1.1.2. Research relevance 
Since the recognition of user experiences importance in marketing and business development 
many studies and researches have demonstrated that some elements of UX, that user 
experience could have a positive influence into pushing the customers purchase decision or 
even that it could be an asset when abording a new purchase method. 
However, the potential of user experience on a customer’s purchase intention is always 
implied, the conclusion is implicit and rarely affirmative of the causality between the user 
experiences externality and the customers purchase intention. 
This research focuses on user problematic but exposes two inquiries, can it be affirmed the 
user experience influences customers in their decision processes and purchase intentions, and 
if so could this influence go as far as being a decisive element of a marketing strategy in a 
highly competitive context? 
In today's economical context with the shift from retail to online, increasing competitivity and 
companies having to face new challenges through market digitalisation the question of what 
would have the capacity to make a difference and be a competitive advantage has to be 
explored! 
User experience is in line with the companies need, the market evolution and the customer 
demand, is easy for companies to develop and is proven to have good potential. 
 
 
 
 
 
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1.2. Preliminary Literature review 
The concept of user experience was first mentioned in the 90’s. The term was almost 
exclusive to specialised publications such as “Learning from user experience with 
groupware” by Christine Bullen and John Bennett, although this work is using a specific 
angle which is the study of the TeamWorkStation technology, it still is valid insight into the 
vision of user experience prior to digital marketing. 
Further on, in the late 90’s, publications such as “Web Navigation: Designing the User 
Experience” by Jennifer Fleming, which was first edited in 1998, marked the first association 
of user experience and online business. In her work the author references User experience as 
a critical element of web development and website building. The book is mostly focused on 
guiding the reader into developing its own website, nonetheless, it still offers a rich insight 
into how user experience was perceived at this early stage of digital marketing and what 
evolution perspective was given to it. Obviously, User experience was already perceived as a 
determining point of online user/customer relationship. However, considering the amount of 
publications dedicated to it at the time it still wasn’t a major focus of web designers and e-
commerce companies. 
The early 20’s, the premises of digital marketing as well as the expansion of online 
businesses, increased the importance given to user experience, which became an important 
aspect of marketing strategies for companies at the forefront of online trade. with researches 
such as “Variables affecting information technology end-user 
satisfaction: a meta-analysis of the empirical literature” conducted by Mo Adam Mahmood, 
Janice Burn, Leopold Gemoets and Carmen Jaquez. The work highlights the impact of user 
experience on the potential customers in its decision process and interaction with the 
company, as well as the lack of consideration of UX of many stores during the conception of 
their website. 
Since the consideration of user experience has evolved and is slowly being perceived as a key 
point of web design and marketing strategies. Researches like “Usability in online shops: 
scale construction, validation and the influence on the buyers’ intention and decision” made 
by Udo Konradt , Hartmut Wandke , Björn Balazs  and Timo Christophersen, in a 
collaboration between the Humboldt University of Berlin and the institute in psychology of 
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Kiel’s University, introduces the idea of the influence of the usage ease of a given online 
store on its users purchase intentions. 
 
1.3. Theoretical Framework 
According to studies reported by impactbnd.com: 
● 70% of consumers learn about a company through their blog rather than ads 
● 79% of people who don’t like what they find on one site will go back and search for 
another site 
● 52% of users say that a bad user experience on a mobile device made them less likely 
to engage with a company 
User experience is obviously an important aspect of a company's marketing strategy, these 
numbers are the manifesto of the effect of bad use experience on customers long term 
purchase intention. 
So far, the impact of some of user experience elements on purchase intention has been 
questioned by multiple studies and researches. The existence of a link between a positive 
customer experience and a positive perception of a company has been demonstrated manier 
times before. 
The questions raised, which are also the reason for this study, is the strength of this impact 
and the weight that it may have when put against other impacting factors of a customer 
purchase decision, specifically in a highly competitive market condition. Is user experience 
enough to make a difference in the customers decision process, can it shift a customer 
impression enough to influence the purchase intention? 
To define our theoretical framework, we must identify the main concepts of our study as well 
as their stakes. 
User experience is supposed to have influence on a customer’s impression of a company, its 
brands and products. The theories that evolve around UX are that it can give a little push and 
foster an already potential customer into becoming a customer. Or turn a onetime customer 
into a regular customer. The theoretical assumptions that this research and its case study 
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make is that user experience can have a larger range of leverage on a customer go as far as 
creating a need or triggering a purchase. These assumptions are in line with the findings 
exposed in the preliminary literature review but will need to be further demonstrated. 
An exhaustive answer of the research questioning requires good understanding of a 
customer’s decision process, precise definitions a user experience and of previous studies 
carried on the subject, field expert and customer population inquiry. This research requires to 
investigate both end of the user experience, the companies and end users. 
 
1.4. Definitions and delimitations 
1.4.1. Definitions 
1.4.1.1. User experience 
The International Organization for Standardization defines user experience as: 
“a person’s perceptions and responses resulting from the use and or anticipated use of a 
product, system or service.” 
In other words, user experience is a group of elements and items that accompany the 
customer in its entire journey through the purchase / consumption of a product, system or 
service. User experience is defined from the search of the product, through the purchase 
process and pass the final post purchase use / consumption of the enquiry. 
Other entities such as the Nielsen Norman Group, a California based company that is 
considered to be one of the world leaders in Research-Based User Experience, include the 
service/ product provider within the definition of user experience: 
“"User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, 
its services, and its products.” 
In both cases, the customer, its needs and the relationship it has of the product is defined as user 
experience core. 
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1.4.1.2. The purchase decision process 
Customers are humans, and for the most part humans are considered to be rational creatures, 
capable of taking rational decisions. Purchase, especially in a non-monopoly context requires 
to take a decision. Do I need this? If yes at what price? What model? Can I postpone this 
purchase? Choosing a product instead of another one, favouring a brand over a competitor all 
of these are decisions. 
Decisions derive from processes. A decision process is the paths and mechanism used by an 
individual's brain that will lead him to favour option A over option B. By identifying the 
steps and semantic that go into a decision purchase one is more likely to understand the 
power that user experience might have over it. 
Marketer define customer purchase decision into a 5 step process: first the “Need 
recognition”, the customer identifies a need and start his quest to fulfil it, second “the 
information search”, the more option the customer is confronted to the more it will seek 
information to make the right decision, followed by “the evaluation of alternatives”, at this 
stage the customer has identified his options and evaluates their capacities to fulfil its need, 
eventually comes “the purchase decision” and finally the “Post purchase behaviour” which is 
the customer evaluating the degree to which his need has been fulfilled and Werther he is 
satisfied with his decision. 
 
In other word, a consumer identifies a void, gathers information about how to fill it, scales 
and hierarchies his options, he then uses this ranking to decide which option is best, proceeds 
to purchase and evaluates the success of the purchase item to fill the void. Each step of this 
process is important because either has its own characteristics, sensitivity and each will 
respond and react differently to potential user experience strategies. 
1.4.1.3. The terms of a highly competitive market 
The market is the milieu / industry in which a company evolves and sets business. The 
competitiveness of this milieu is defined by the number and density of entities sharing its 
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activity. As well as the fierceness of the strategic moves required to evolve in this market. 
Lastly the stability of the market and the share distribution also is a strong indicator of its 
competitiveness. 
From an economic standpoint highly, competitive markets are defined by the following 
characteristics: 
● Many Buyers and Sellers: There are no monopoly in either end of the market and the 
number of potential association is high from a customer as well as vendor position. 
● Few if Any Barriers to Exit or Entry: it is easy for entities to start and stop competing 
on this market.  Meaning that any company who would want to integrate the market 
could do so with little difficulty, and even so if it was to choose to leave it. 
● Homogeneous Products, the similarity of the competitor’s product or services favours 
competition, they must be little to no technological monopoly and the offers are 
similar to one another. 
● Low bargaining power, this is more a consequence than a cause, the abundance of 
competitors associated with product homogeneity creates difficulty for retailers to be 
in a power position and the same is true for the abundance of clients. These 
parameters create a low bargain situation for both ends of the market. 
1.4.2. Delimitations 
The research limits are the following: 
● Many of the exploited studies for the literature review research an aspect of user 
experience and fail to demonstrate the effect of user experience in its entirety. 
● User experience is a use / customer focused strategy axes. Meaning that each industry, 
market and product has specific parameters, customers purchasing products don’t 
have the same approach, sensitivity or expectations are customers purchasing a 
service. Therefor a user experience strategy that was demonstrated to have influence 
on a certain situation might be obsolete for another situation. in other words, although 
the results are relevant to prove that user experience influences or not a purchase 
decision, this specific demonstration might not work for another situation. 
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● Although every theory was backed up by a case study some of them had their own 
limits either in the research context or the population observed meaning that although 
the case studies are all reliable the result that they feature must be tempered. 
● The population researched in the case study made specifically for this research 
represents the population of the studied company meaning that the results are viable 
for this situation but must be nuanced when applied to other situations. 
1.4.3. The empirical context 
The empirical context will be the study of the Easyvoyage case. Easyvoyage is an online 
travel price comparator. it has lost its position in the French online travel market despite great 
efforts in offer and service diversification as well as business partnership consolidation. 
During a semestrial assembly the question was raised of why the company would lose market 
shares and customer despite its business development investment and strategies. 
The honest situation of Easyvoyage is that the company has favoured its partnerships and 
technological development at the expense of its website presentation, usability and 
performance, in other words at the detriment of its user experience. The website is covered in 
the company's partners adds, the product information provided are sparse and obviously 
written with marketing purposes. Moreover, Easyvoyage is the only one of its markets that 
has not developed a user focused experience. 
The strategic vacuum that is the absence of consideration for user experience at Easyvoyage 
makes it a great case study for this research. 
1.5. Research questions 
This research focuses on the role of User experience on the potential customers decision 
process. This problematic is formulated with the following question: 
"What is the impact of user experience on customer purchase intention in a highly 
competitive market?" 
This problematic raises the question of the usefulness of User experience for online 
companies and their customers and the relevance of the impact it may have. This 
interrogation is complex and requires answering multiple sub-research questions. 
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The interrogation here concerns: 
1. The impact of user experience on the potential customer in general 
2. The strength with which it impacts the subject 
3. The ability to have an impact even for a purchase that concerns a highly competitive 
market. 
These questions have helped me during my entire research process to identify the problematic 
and the frame in which I was working. They underline the different elements of the 
questioning appropriately and allow a smooth and logical processing of the data, theory and 
response to the problematic. 
1.6. Research Methodology 
1.6.1. Academical research 
Regarding the academical research for the literature review, keywords related to the research 
questions were chosen to run researches through literature databases. 
Among the chosen keywords, the most relevant were: user experience, UX, Impact, purchase 
intention, decision process, competitive, influence and impact. The chosen databases were 
Google Scholar, scholarvox, Researchgate and Sciencedirect. 
Over 90 articles were found, reduced to 32 according to the following process. The articles 
have first been sorted by relevance of the title, then by relevance of content to the thesis and 
finally by relevance of author or source. 
1.6.2. Empirical research 
The difficulty faced when choosing and designing the research methodology is that many 
articles and case studies evolving around the link between User experience and the buying 
decision mentioned the fact that consuming the product or service is part of the User 
experience. Furthermore, studies often showed that when making a buying decision, 
customers are often biased and influenced by their experience, or lack thereof, with the seller. 
In the scheme of our case study there is no significant post purchase experience because the 
company is only the intermediate between the customer and the seller. This aspect gave a 
new perspective to how the empirical research should be designed. To have better insight and 
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more relevant answers to our question the decision was made to first interview experts of the 
field in which the company is as well as people within the company to clearly define what 
question should be asked in the quantitative research in order to be relevant to the research 
question. 
1.6.2.1. Qualitative research 
The qualitative research was developed with the aim to define the user experience of offered 
by the company (before during and after the purchase, since the post purchase experience can 
influence the future buying decision) and to identify the impact of user on the buying 
decision. 
Therefor the interviewees had to have strong knowledge of the companies and its industries 
situation as well as insights of the impact of User experience in the digital industries on 
purchase decision. To collect the data, I attended the IFTM topresa convention which is for 
professionals of the tourism industry and interviewed the general director of Easyvoyage, 
which is the subject of the case study. 
In summary, the qualitative research methods will be interviews of the general director and 
founder of the studied company as well as question asked during the IFTM top resa 
convention. 
1.6.2.2. Quantitative research methods 
The quantitative research was developed with the aim of having the user/consumers 
perspective. The Qualitative research abled a better insight from user experience and industry 
expert, however the research has a focus on consumer in a global perspective. In order to 
have data focused on the research question and the case study situation the decision was 
made to use a qualitative user research to collect consumer focused data. 
The chosen method is a closed-question questionnaire send to a pool of customers as well as 
potential customers (individual who travel or have an attention to travel with a budget focus). 
1.6.2.3. Methodology relevance 
The decision was made to use both qualitative and quantitative methods for this case study 
precisely for a relevance matter. The qualitative research is required because a research on 
user experience is customer/user focus by nature, specialist opinions alone would not have 
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been sufficient to support any theories, it was mandatory that any potential theory was tested 
on a population. Especially in consumer-focused research, a theory could not be positively 
affirmed if it had been neglected to confront the theories to a potential consumer pool. 
However, the market at hand is intricate and therefore complex to understand, qualitative 
research permitted to understand the market better, have a better insight into the challenges 
that were at stakes and to help develop the quantitative questionnaire appropriately. 
Furthermore, having the specialist insight and opinion on the question at hand helped to 
better analyse and apprehend the qualitative results. 
Both methodologies were chosen not as a matter accuracy, better analyses and understanding 
of the research and its results. 
 
1.7. Structure of the study 
The study is structured with the following architecture. 
The literature review is built to demonstrate the potential of user experience as well as the 
different ways in which it can beneficiate businesses. This is demonstrated by studying the 
customers decision process, which will be defined in different steps, existing literature is then 
studied to identify how user experience can act in each of these steps. further on, additional 
literature will help to define in which way user experience is relevant in influencing customer 
behaviour offline then online. and lastly the mobile shopping situation will be singled out as 
an example of how user experience can prove to be a differentiation asset in competitive 
markets. 
These theories will then be tested by the case studies, the qualitative data will be used to 
analyse the plausibility of these theories on a customer end. The quantitative data will come 
in support of the qualitative data but also will be used to test the theory from a retailer’s end. 
The finding will then be discussed and question to identify what can be affirmed and identity 
the limits and reasonable doubts faced by the research. 
  
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2. Literature review 
The overall goals of this chapter are to establish the link between User experience and the 
customers purchase intention using pre-established research, then identify a place where a 
new contribution could be made and identify the right approach for investigating the research 
question. 
The literature review was written the following a Funnel logic. First the studied focused on 
the customers decision process and purchase decision in the larger sense, researching the 
human decision logic and psychology. 
Secondly, the researches were narrowed to User experiences and its impact on the customer’s 
experience, this subpart was used to define User experience, define the effect of user 
experience on a customer will power and priority management, the object here is too target 
definite elements of a customer’s decision process. 
Lastly these theories were applied to online and highly competitive contexts, although this 
part isn't mandatory it allows the study to have a stronger background thanks to similar case 
studies and theories close to our problematic. 
I decided to illustrate all the main theories presented by at least one case study to verify that 
they were applicable beyond a theoretical framework. 
The main article used for the literature review are catalogued in the following table, they are 
organised by reading order. The table contains the title, date of publication, name of the 
author, country and/or university of research and a short resume of each of the main articles 
used for the literature review. The purpose of the table is to give the reader a rapid overview 
of the literature review to allow a better understanding of the theories at hand. 
 
 
 
 
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1. The decision process and purchase decision 
A. The decision process and how a customer identifies and organises its needs and priorities 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
Decision making 
with the analytic 
hierarchy 
process 
2008 Thomas L. 
Saaty 
United 
states of 
America 
University of 
Pittsburgh 
Description of the 
processes and logics used 
when making a decision 
Heart and Mind 
in Conflict: The 
Interplay of 
Affect and 
Cognition in 
Consumer 
Decision 
Making 
December 
1999 
Baba Shiv 
and 
Alexander 
Fedorikhin 
United 
states of 
America 
University of 
Chicago 
Study of the influence of 
cognitive and emotional 
variables on consumer 
decision making. 
B. Online consumer behaviour and purchase intention 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
Influencing the 
online 
consumer's 
behaviour: The 
Web experience 
 
2004 Efthymios 
Constantini
des 
The 
Netherla
nds 
University of 
Twente 
Study of the influence of 
the online user experience 
on its decision process and 
abilities. 
19 
An Empirical 
Study of 
Consumer 
Switching from 
Traditional to 
Electronic 
Channels: A 
Purchase-
Decision 
Process 
Perspective 
2014 Alok 
Gupta, Bo-
chiuan Su  
& Zhiping 
Walter 
United 
states of 
America 
/ Taiwan 
University of 
Minnesota, 
National 
central 
University of 
Taiwan and 
University of 
Colorado 
Demonstration and study of 
behavioural differences 
between online and offline 
customers 
A comparison of 
purchase 
decision 
calculus 
between 
potential and 
repeat customers 
of an online 
store 
2009 Hee-
Woong 
Kim and 
Sumeet 
Gupta 
India Shri 
Shankaracha
rya Institute 
of 
Management 
and 
Technology 
Demonstration that the 
judgement of value made 
by a customer isn't 
influenced by non-
monetary variables, 
especially for the first 
purchase. 
This is interesting for the 
research because it induces 
that perceived value could 
be created by factors such 
as user experience. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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2. The impact of user experience on the customer and its decision process. 
A. Users experience definition and delimitation 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
The Elements of 
User 
Experience: 
User-Centered 
Design for the 
Web and 
Beyond   
2002 Jesse James 
Garrett 
United 
states of 
America 
university of 
Florida 
Defining and delimiting 
user experience, the 
evolution from product 
design to user experience 
design and the importance 
of a well-designed user 
experience. 
User Experience 
Basics 
- - United 
states of 
America 
www.usabili
ty.gov 
Establishing the basics of 
User experience and the 
Human needs that it 
touches and responds to. 
B. User experiences influence on the customers and its decision abilities 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
Understanding 
online purchase 
intentions: 
contributions 
from technology 
and trust 
perspectives 
2002 Hans van 
der 
Heijden, 
Tibert 
Verhagen 
& Marcel 
Creemers 
Nether- 
lands 
Faculty of 
Economics 
and Business 
Administrati
on, Vrije 
Universiteit 
Amsterdam 
Study of the contribution 
and influence of 
technology and trust 
impression during an 
online purchase 
21 
Can User 
Experience 
affect buying 
intention? A 
case study on 
the evaluation of 
exercise 
equipment 
November 
2016 
Giuseppe 
Fedele, 
Mario 
Fedriga, 
Silvano 
Zanuso, 
Simon 
Mastrangel
o & 
Francesco 
Di Nocera 
Italy Sapienza 
University of 
Rome 
Demonstration of the 
influence of a perceived 
usability and positive user 
experience on the 
customers buying intention. 
Which implies the 
necessity to have a user 
experience focused 
development strategy. 
Analysis of 
usability factors 
affecting 
purchase 
intention in 
online e-
commerce sites 
2014 R A 
Perdana 
and A 
Suzianti 
    Demonstration of the link 
between a positive user 
experience on the Buying 
point and the purchase 
intention during an online 
purchase. 
C. Demonstration of the influence of user experience on purchase intention 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
Website 
attributes that 
increase 
consumer 
purchase 
intention: A 
conjoint analysis 
January 
2009 
Ying-Hueih 
Chena I-
ChiehHsub 
and Chia-
ChenLina 
- - Study of the effect of User 
experience among other 
variables on customers 
preferences and purchase 
intention. 
22 
The influence of 
hedonic and 
utilitarian 
motivations on 
user 
engagement: 
The case of 
online shopping 
experiences 
April 2010 Heather 
Lynn 
O’Brien 
Canada University of 
British 
Columbia 
Study and demonstration of 
the positive externalities 
created by User experience 
on a potential customer and 
how they affect it's buying 
motivation and engagement 
towards a product. 
Implying that user 
experience can push a 
customer into a buying 
decision. 
 
Effects of 
reputation and 
website quality 
on online 
consumers' 
emotion, 
perceived risk 
and purchase 
intention: Based 
on the stimulus‐
organism‐
response model 
 
 
 
 
- Jiyoung 
Kim and 
Sharron J. 
Lennon 
United 
states of 
America 
University of 
Delaware 
and 
University of 
North Texas 
Study of the effect of 
negative user experience, 
among other variables on a 
website, on the consumers 
purchase intention. 
23 
3. Highly competitive market, how it impacts purchase decisions. 
A. Demonstration of user experiences potential to be a differentiation factor 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
Welcome to the 
Experience 
Economy 
August 
1998 
B. Joseph 
Pine II and 
James H. 
Gilmore 
United 
states of 
America 
Harvard 
University 
Introduction of the notion 
that experience is the next 
step in the "progression 
economy", how user 
experience is an added 
value and how to take 
advantage of it. 
 
 
The New 
Experience for 
Business: Why 
User Experience 
Is the 
Differentiation 
Strategy in the 
Cloud Context 
 
 
 
 
2011 Andrey 
Sirotkin & 
Bronan 
McCabe 
Finland VTT 
Technical 
Research 
Centre 
OULU 
Illustrates differentiation 
through user experience 
development with the cloud 
industry case study 
24 
B. How user experience proves to be a key factor in a competitive market 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
Analysing the 
intention to 
purchase on 
hotel websites: a 
study of 
travellers to 
Hong Kong 
September 
2005 
James 
Wong and 
Rob Law 
- International 
Journal of 
Hospitality 
Management 
Case study analysing the 
effect of an improved UX 
on a hotels website on the 
customers purchase 
decision and perception. 
Case study of the hong 
Kong hotel market, which 
is a highly competitive 
market due to the high 
density of competitors on a 
limited geographically 
defined market. 
 
Consumers' 
perceptions of e‐
shopping 
characteristics: 
an expectancy‐
value approach 
2013 Heejin Lim 
and Alan J. 
Dubinsky 
United 
States of 
America 
Purdue 
University 
Thesis questioning the 
importance of certain 
variable on a website to 
stand out from the 
competition through the 
underlayment of customers 
values. 
 
 
 
25 
C. The mobile shopping phenomenon 
Publication title Publication 
date 
Author Country Institution Contribution 
The mobile 
shopping 
revolution: 
Redefining the 
consumer 
decision process 
March 2018 David J. 
Fauldsa, 
W. Glynn 
Mangold, 
P.S. Raju 
and Sarath 
Valsalana 
- Business 
Horizons 
research and study of the 
user experience when 
online shopping on a 
mobile device, how it 
affects the customers and 
helps to stand out from the 
competition. 
On the Go: How 
Mobile 
Shopping 
Affects 
Customer 
Purchase 
Behaviour 
June 2015 Rebecca 
Jen-Hui 
Wang, 
Edward C. 
Malthouse 
and 
Lakshman 
Krishnamur
thi 
United 
states of 
America 
- Demonstration on how the 
new user experience that is 
online purchasing through 
mobile devices has 
changed customers 
behaviour. 
  
26 
2.1. The decision process and purchase decision 
In order to understand how customers, take purchase decision and what process drives these 
decisions. The first subpart of the literature review focuses on these elements of customer 
behaviour as well as how the online purchase context influences them. These researches are 
determinant to understand the further analysis of the research. 
2.1.1. The decision process, how a customer identifies and 
organises its needs and priorities. 
It is vital to understand decision making process, in order to understand the effect of user 
experience and marketing in general on customers. In his work “Decision making with the 
analytic hierarchy process “, Thomas L. Saaty suggests that humans take decision through a 
measuring and scaling process, in which they identify and hierarchise their needs and wants. 
This process allows individuals to rank the different options offered to them and take a 
decision with the highest chance to satisfy their needs. Further in the development of his 
theory Thomas L. Saaty indicates that while most of the decision process is made 
consciously, the unconscious still carries an important weight when scaling the needs and the 
ability of any given option to satisfy it. (Saaty, 2008) 
The recognition of that both, conscious and unconscious, have on decision making gives us 
important insights on what to take into consideration when designating the elements of 
decision making process, and which one are influenced by user experience. The article 
written by Thomas l. Saaty was estimated as a secure and relevant source since it was quoted 
as a source for multiple of the other articles that were researched regarding the questioning of 
human decision-making process. (Saaty, 2008) 
For a better apprehension of our problematic one must understand what aspects of human 
psychology affects decision making. The case study driven by Baba Shiv and Alexander 
Fedorikhin at the university of Chicago has demonstrated the role of the conscious and 
unconscious in the process of decision making and pinpoint when each was the strongest, to 
which instinct they responded as well when they came in action. Their study “Heart and Mind 
in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making”, puts a 
population at a decision stand point, the subject must choose between two deserts, one being 
a less healthy however more tempting and the second is more healthful but less appetizing. 
27 
The research is testing whether the individuals would be more tempted by their cognitive or 
emotional stimulus. The research shows that the more the participants had access to 
information about the different choices the more inclined they were to respond to their 
cognitive senses. In other words, the further the customer proceeds to gather and scale 
information the more one must speak to its cognitive abilities. Meaning that, the more the 
customer has information the more the user experience must interact with the cognitive 
abilities of the customer. (Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999) 
2.1.2. Online consumer behaviour and purchase intention 
Once the different components with which an individual takes decision are identified 
alongside with the mechanism used and the process used, it was decided to research how the 
online purchase context affected these elements. As said in the previous subpart, the 
customers purchase decision processes are also influenced by emotional and non-rational 
information processing systems. It is only logical that the change of purchasing context 
would affect these elements. 
In their research Zhiping Walter, Alok Gupta and Bo-chiuan Su, support the idea that channel 
changing affects the consumer’s behaviour as well as its priorities evaluation. The case study 
shows that on a population from over 300 interviewees, more than 50% of the researched 
population would change behaviours and intentions towards either how they perceived the 
product or how they prioritized their needs. For instance, online purchase increases the 
importance of the price tag in comparison to traditional on-site purchase. The subjects 
experience an impression of time optimisation when purchasing online when it in fact took 
them more time to effectively acquire the purchased item, because they didn’t consider 
delivery time as a time spent on the purchase. (Walter, Gupta & Su, 2004) 
“Influencing the online consumer's behaviour: The Web experience” upholds this theory, to 
which it adds that because the customer scales and prioritizes its needs and the product’s 
ability to fulfil these needs differently when purchasing online, the entire approach to its 
decision process must be adapted. Suggesting that although the customer uses more of its 
cognitive abilities online it is also more prone to interpret more elements as value 
information. Meaning that it will identify more elements as information and more 
information as being significant for its decision making. (Constantinides, 1991) 
28 
On another hand, the research from the Shri Shankaracharya institute of management and 
technology (SSTC) in India suggests that some aspects of the offline decision process are 
kept during online purchase and only pushed to an extreme. Confirming the results 
demonstrated in “Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in 
Consumer Decision Making” research, according to which the more a person has access to 
information the more it will be inclined to use its cognitive capacities over its emotional 
instincts when taking a decision. (Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999) 
With the research driven by Hee-Woong Kim and Sumeet Gupta, the SSTC advances the 
theory according to which the online customer still uses first it’s emotional reasoning 
followed by its cognitive reasoning once more data is accessible. Merely, the information is 
made available more rapidly online than it is offline, giving the impression that the customer 
is more prone to use its cognitive capacities online when in fact it is simply confronted to 
information at a faster pace. This implies that, the stage of decision making concerned with 
emotion reasoning when online shopping in the first impression phase. The further 
implication of this theory is that only new customers will be sensitive to non-cognitive related 
information such as the websites lay out or the websites navigation design. Concretely this 
hints that when developing the online user experience, one must focus on new customers 
when developing the emotional responsive communication and provide a more pragmatic and 
information fuelled strategy when attempting to promote the product or brand. (Kim & 
Gupta, 2009) 
2.2. The impact of user experience on the customer and its 
decision process. 
Once it was determined that customers take decisions through a process of information and 
need scaling and ranking, and how they drift when exposed to an online purchasing context, 
it’s important to identify the leverage that User experience could have on these processes. 
  
29 
2.2.1. Reminder of users experience definition and delimitation 
To understand the impact of User experience on anything, one must first understand user 
experience in itself. 
“User experience (UX) focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, 
what they value, their abilities, and their limitations. [...] UX best practices promote 
improving the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of your product and any 
related services.” 
Via www.usability.gov 
To allow a better understanding of User experience we will use two major sources to define 
the term. First, www.usability.gov, which is the website from which the previous quote was 
taken. Usability.gov belongs to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The 
definition made of UX is the most precise and complete definition found and its source is 
credible which is important when defining a key term. Secondly, “Elements of User 
Experience, the: User-Centred Design for the Web and Beyond” by Jesse James Garrett gives 
an empirical definition of User experience with tangible examples and a less theoretical 
approach. (Garrett, 2002) 
In his paper James Garret describes User experience as developing the “little thing that 
counts” to bring a product from functional to fully functioning. He also explains that UX isn’t 
adding functions to a product but is thinking of every consumer situation and issues and 
solving it. For example, a coffee machine, adding a tea function to the coffee machine is 
product development not user experience, however, adding an alert function to let the 
customer know that the coffee is ready is User experience improvement. An element was 
added to optimise the existing use of the product, not to add a new function. (Garrett, 2002) 
Now that User experience has been defined from the receiving end, the focus will be shifted 
to the sending end. What elements should be considered when company defines its use 
experience? 
From a sending end viewpoint, user experience is best explained through Peter Morville’s 
honeycomb graph: 
30 
 
In order to be efficient a user experience must be: 
● Useful, to answers the consumers need 
● Desirable to increase the perceived value of the product 
● Accessible to be efficient for all users 
● Credible, to gain trust and belief 
● Findable, a user cannot use what he cannot find 
● Usable, the easier the use the best the experience 
● Valuable, it must increase user satisfaction 
(Morville, 2004) 
2.2.2. User experiences influence on the customers and its decision 
abilities 
The early 2000’s is the rise of User experience, when UX gained recognition and started to be 
taken more seriously in company’s product and marketing strategies development. It also is, 
when Hans Van der Heijden, Tibert Verhagen and Marcel Creemers research about the 
contribution of technology and trust in the online purchase context, first established a link 
between User experience and perceived value. The study demonstrated that the way a 
31 
customer perceives a website or the use of it directly influences it’s purchasing intention, 
implying that user experience could be used to influence a customer into buying a product if 
it increased the perception that the customer had when using the website. (Van der Heijden,  
Verhagen & Creemers, 2003) 
This theory was supported further by the “Can User Experience affect buying intention?” 
case study, made at the Sapienza University of Rome. The experience concerned offline 
product but lead with a simpler case study and therefore more concluding results. In this 
experience customers were confronted to the treadmills; these treadmills had been developed 
with a user experience focus rather than a performance focus. The results showed that the 
treadmills were perceived as more functional and potential customers were more inclined to 
purchase the treadmill due to the gain in perceived value. (Fedele, Fedriga, Zanuso, 
Mastrangelo & Di Nocera, 2016) 
The “Analysis of usability factors affecting purchase intention in online e-commerce sites” of 
R A Perdana and A Suzianti, further supports the theory into the online purchasing context. 
Demonstrating that user experience influences purchasing intention and therefor decision 
process through website usability. However, this research goes further in depth in defining 
which aspects of user experience affected the customer directly or indirectly in its decision 
process. In this research the elements that influence the customer in a truly tangible and 
measurable manners were credibility, readability and telepresence. The other measured 
elements such as simplicity and usability alongside consistency and interactivity were also 
found to influence the decision process but the results were not as concluding? In their paper 
Perdana and Suzianti do insist on the fact that the last four elements did have an influence on 
the populations decision process, but that it was considerably less than the influence of 
credibility, readability and telepresence. They also indicate that it could be a specific to their 
chosen research population or case study conditions.  
(Perdana & Suzianti, 2014) 
2.2.3. Demonstration of the influence of user experience on 
purchase intention 
The previous subpart demonstrated that elements associated to user experience had enough 
impacts on a potential customers decision making process to potentially influence it’s 
purchase intention. Implying that user experience would by extent also be able to influence 
32 
these parameters. This final subpart demonstrates the theories implied in the previous subpart 
with case studies that mention user experience in it’s all and validate multiple elements of 
user experience as influencing. 
Heather Lynn O’Brien’s case study “The influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivations on 
user engagement: The case of online shopping experiences” demonstrate that the positive 
externalities created by a positive user experience increased the purchase intention through 
potential customer usage satisfaction. Variables such as user experience endurability and 
website usability created positive externalities that drove the potential customer to develop 
trust and perceived product usability. Furthermore, Aesthetic associated to a good website 
usability proved to increase the potential customers focus on the task at hand, increasing the 
likeliness of the customer to assimilate better the product information and associate it with it 
a positive feeling. As we have demonstrated previously, customers a drawn to information to 
satisfy their cognitive sense when online shopping, and if the information is associated to an 
experience secures an increase in purchase intention. (O’Brien, 2010) 
With the same idea in mind, Jiyoung Kim and Sharron J. Lennon studied the effect of 
negative user experience on purchase intention. The intention is to see the power is user 
experience externalities, so far it was demonstrated that it can push a potential customer to 
purchase, but has it enough power to pull a potential customer away from it? The case study 
supported the notion that a positive user experience by providing the potential customer with 
emotional and cognitive satisfaction. Moreover, it also demonstrated that a negative user 
experience decreased purchase intention. The variables impacted by negative user experience 
are noteworthy, regarding what is impacted, a positive UX speaks to the perception of the 
product and its ability to satisfy a need, whereas a negative UX creates an overall impression 
of risk taking. It’s interesting to note that Positive and negative User experience don’t impact 
the same variables in the customers perception and affect. Although this research does indeed 
demonstrate the power of user experience to pull the customer away from a purchase 
decision, it must be noted that the interrogated population is mostly feminine, women are 
more sensitive to risk taking which is indicated to be a limit to this study. Nonetheless, the 
negative externalities have created an increase of the perceived risk across the entire 
population, only it is more likely to go as far as impacting purchase intention by woman than 
by men. (Kim & Lennon, 2013) 
33 
Lastly, in a technology focused research: “Website attributes that increase consumer purchase 
intention: A conjoint analysis”, Ying-Hueih Chena, I-ChiehHsub and Chia-ChenLina explore 
the effect of the technological side of user experience on purchase intention. They categorize 
User experience elements in 3 groups, technology factors, shopping factors and product 
factors. While variables such as perceived product value, trust and acquisition time are 
categorized to Shopping and product factors, three key variables are associated with 
technology. Meaning that the level of technological development of these variables would 
impact the quality of the user experience and therefor the customers purchase intention. The 
concerned variables are the platforms perceived security, privacy and usability, the research 
shows that the more a customer was tech savvy the stronger it would respond to these 
variables. Meaning that the more technology-aware a customer is the more it will translate 
website’s perceived security, privacy and usability as relevant and valuable information when 
estimating the value of a product and taking the purchase decision. (Chena, ChiehHsub and 
ChenLina, 2009) 
2.3. Highly competitive market, how it impacts purchase 
decisions 
It has been demonstrated that user experience had impact on potential customers evaluation 
and decision process as well as purchase intention, so much so that it could both push a 
customer towards a purchase decision and pull it away from it. Here the question regards the 
extent of user experiences pull as well as its longevity. 
The online purchase context increases competitivity by aggregating competitors, providing 
more product information and consumer feedback as well as permitting faster comparison 
systems. To fully evaluate user experience potential, it must be confronted to present 
circumstances, to see Werther it’s abilities are relevant for a long-term strategy. 
  
34 
2.3.1. Demonstration of user experiences potential to be a 
differentiation factor 
The modern world exists in an economy of growth and added value, in 1998 James Wong 
and Rob Law theorized that the next level of this economy would be experience. Their 
assumption was that after moving from selling products to selling services we would move on 
to selling experiences to customers. They designed the following graph to model their theory: 
 
The concept was that the economy was moving from a service economy onto an experience 
economy. Companies should now, develop and advertise an entire experience around their 
product or service as an added value, to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This 
notes the rise of user experience and the demonstration of its function as a differentiation 
factor. The advantage of using user experience development as a differentiation strategy 
would be that it is relatively cost efficient since it doesn’t involve further development of the 
product. UX is an added value that doesn’t require heavy investments such research and 
development cost. It is efficient since it gives the impression of being tailored to the 
customer, any other innovation, especially product development, would be to tailor to each 
customer. User experience, because it involves the individual in its making, gives the 
impression of being tailored to each customer, at every single of its visit. (Wong & Law, 
1998) 
35 
The following chart is an illustration of User experience as an added value in the experience 
economy. The case study is coffee and Starbucks, the trade of raw coffee beans is the 
equivalent of the agrarian economy, it’s also the first step of the progression economy. 
Further on, the commercialization of pre-grinded and roasted coffee is the equivalent of 
industrial economy, in other words, the raw material was processed into a consumable good. 
Thirdly, the coffee sold at a café, already served, ready to be consumed is the service 
economy, a waiter has done all the needed manual labour for you. So, what is the last step? 
Why makes the difference between drinking a coffee at a café and drinking a coffee at 
Starbucks? Why can Starbuck charge 3 extra dollars for the same expresso any customer 
could get anywhere else?  
1 
The difference is, user experience! As James Garrett said, it’s “the little things” like writing 
the customer’s name on the cup. The customer knows that he isn't acquainted with the barista, 
nonetheless, the fact that he is called by his name gives an impression of belonging. That 
what user experience and the experience economy are about, they entice the customer to 
purchase not because they want the product but because of the perceived experience provided 
by the purchase/obtention of the product. (Wong & Law, 1998) 
                                               
1 This case study was found in multiple papers about the economy of experience and was 
never attached to any source. It is from researchagte.com but can not be associated to a 
preciser reference for certain. 
36 
This is also true for the online trade market, the case study “The New Experience for 
Business: Why User Experience Is the Differentiation Strategy in the Cloud Context” 
explores the potential of added value offered by user experience on the Cloud market. The 
research demonstrates that because user experience is a user focused development of the 
business strategy it is adaptable to most industries, once the customer need is identified. For 
instance, for the cloud industry, Andrey Sirotkin & Bronan McCabe demonstrated that the 
development of certain user experience variable on the Cloud such as usability and aesthetics 
provided the customer with an impression of a safer platform although these two functions 
are solely customer-oriented function and affect in no way the safety of the cloud. This 
impression alone drove more users to the clouds because it gave them the impression that 
their data would be safe in an easy to use and polished cloud. (Sirotkin & McCabe, 2011) 
2.3.2. How user experience proves to be a key factor in a 
competitive market 
The next step of our demonstration is to demonstrate how user experience by being a 
differentiation asset is also a key factor to develop when facing a competitive market. 
In their research “Analysing the intention to purchase on hotel websites: a study of travellers 
to Hong Kong”, James Wong and Rob Law analyse the effect of user experience 
development of a hotels online booking process and website. The hotel industry in Honk 
Kong is subject to high competitiveness due to the number of competitors and that the 
potential customers have access to little information given the amount of possibility given 
plus although the market is online the potential customer pool is still highly restricted by the 
fact that the market is geographically defined. The improved system shows to be more 
efficient and drives more booking than the previous system which as less customer focus. 
Moreover, the new pull of the website allows the hotel to adopt a better pricing strategy 
which also is a key point when in dealing with highly competitive markets. (Wong & Law, 
1998) 
In support of this theory, Heejin Lim and Alan J. Dubinsky’s research on “Consumers' 
perceptions of e‐shopping characteristics: an expectancy‐value approach”, demonstrate the 
efficiency of user experience as a differentiation asset in hyper-competitive market. 
These studies find their limits in the fact that they don’t go as far as affirming the pull of user 
experience on purchase decision, they suggest it either through result or as a potential 
37 
extension of their studies, but the question is never positively confirmed. (Lim & Dubinsky, 
2013) 
2.3.3. The mobile shopping phenomenon 
The revolution of mobile shopping is introduced by Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang, Edward C. 
Malthouse and Lakshman Krishnamurthi in their article “On the Go: How Mobile Shopping 
Affects Customer Purchase Behaviour”, published in 2015. The research highlights the rise of 
online shopping through mobile devices, how it has revolutionized the consumer behaviour 
and how user experience has evolved through it. The opening of their research describes why 
mobile shopping is different to any other kind of shopping from a consumer as well as from a 
retailer stand point. Mobile shopping has a much longer browsing and comparing phase, 
followed by a waiting time where the potential consumer will only put the desired item in a 
waiting list in the form of either a Wishlist or a “bag” and purchase can be triggered by 
notifications or by giving the consumer the impression that he might wait too long and miss 
out on being able to purchase the item. From a consumer behaviour standpoint this implies 
that the scaling and hierarchizing phase is longer, a new phase arises in the form of the 
Wishlist moment and lastly the purchase time can happen anywhere as long as the customer 
has his mobile with him and it can be triggered. This is where the study reaches his limits in 
terms of user experience analysis, however given our previous demonstrations we can 
develop the analysis a touch further. Given the impact of mobile shopping on the consumer 
behaviour with the itinerant function and the trigger possibility, the consequence on user 
experience are simple to bring to light. The itinerant ability of mobile shopping gives retailer 
the opportunity to develop a user experience strategy that will involve the customer on a 24/7 
basis. Before mobile shopping retailers had to wait for customers to be either in the store or 
on their website to provide an active user experience, with mobile shopping and notifications 
retailers can allure their users to their apps or websites. Moreover, the user has now access to 
much more information, some of which can be used as purchase trigger! (Wang, Malthouse 
& Krishnamurth, 2015) 
The article “The mobile shopping revolution: Redefining the consumer decision process” 
explores the potential of mobile shopping further, especially the trigger power. In their paper 
David J. Fauldsa, W. Glynn Mangold, P.S.Raju and Sarath Valsalana insist of mobile 
shopping trigger power and introduce the idea that mobile shopping gives retailers a unique 
and sustainable competitive advantage. Prior to mobile shopping information regarding the 
38 
popularity of an item, the available stock or the price evolution were virtually impossible to 
give to the customers and even so with such timely precision! This information coupled with 
push notification give retailers power to potentially trigger a purchase intention whenever and 
wherever. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the power given to the retailers through 
mobile shopping experience in which it reduces competition. Once a customer has the 
retailers application on its smartphone the retailer has a considerable advantage in that it can 
provide a constant and more inclusive user experience to the potential customer, in addition 
to the purchase trigger potential. (Fauldsa, Mangold, Raju & Valsalana, 2018) 
The power of user experience over purchase decision in undeniable in the mobile shopping 
context, this axe was pursued to emphasize the potential impact on customer purchase 
decision in a highly competitive market such as the hotel market in a highly touristic place or 
the mobile shopping context. To extrapolate further we could even go as far as suggesting 
that user experience could be the tool to reduce the competitivity in certain purchase context 
and industries. 
  
39 
3. Research design and methods  
As seen in the literature review the questioning around Werther user experience has or hasn’t 
power over purchase intentions in a highly competitive market context is best studied in 
specific case studies. There for the case study chosen develops in a hyper competitive market 
but also very specific in its nature and with unique parameters that will be further explained 
in the research context. 
3.1. Research context 
As stated in the introduction this case study takes place in a very specific context, the market 
and product parameters are unique, and it develops in one of the largest and most competitive 
industries in the online purchase context. 
3.1.1. The market 
The market that interest this research is the E-tourism market, meaning the online travel 
trade. This market is of interest because of its product parameters such as the absence of 
stock and the life cycle of its products but more importantly because it is among the biggest 
retail market online with a growing number of competitors entities and categories. The 
research will focus on the French E-tourism market and more precisely on the “bargain” E-
tourism, because it corresponds to the market in which the company is most active, plus it is 
the most highly competitive part of the market which allow a better and more accurate test of 
our questioning and hypothesis. 
The French E-tourism bargain market (FETBM) is a hyper competitive market, the different 
competitors can be identified and organized in four categories and 12 sub-categories. The 
four main categories are Producers, digital travel intermediates, non-specialist intermediates 
and traditional intermediates. 
Producers are the entities that create and trade bargain bundles, these are flash sales groups, 
group sales, brand outlets … etc. Digital travel intermediates and non-specialist intermediates 
are entities that regrouped offers from different producers, they provide a variety of bargain 
bundles from multiple producers. The difference between digital travel intermediates and 
non-specialist intermediates is that non-specialist intermediates don’t specialise in travel, 
their catalogue extends to other types of products and services. Lastly traditional 
40 
intermediates are entities that also operate in the offline market. Retailers and travel agencies 
who have travel offers on their website as well as on their offline sell points are considered 
traditional intermediates. 
The following chart is a representation of the FETBM, with its main elements organized by 
categories and subcategories. 
 
3.1.2. The company 
The studied company is Easyvoyage, founded in June 2000 by Jean-Pierre Nadir who then 
became and still is the CEO of the company. Easyvoyage started as a pioneer of the French 
E-tourism and the French E-tourism bargain industry but has since lost an important part of 
its market share due to the abundance of new competitors. The company is a digital travel 
intermediate that developed a price comparison software allowing customers to buy the best 
flight at the best price possible. 
The argument in favour of Easyvoyage being the case study for this research is the reason for 
which it has lost its market share. The company was well developed and established long 
before the competition augmented, it strongly beneficiated of its CEO large network among 
the Tourism industry, it interests many investors and was well known in France until the early 
41 
2010’s. since then the company is stagnating and can’t seem to get by and stand out from its 
competition. To make the matter worse some of its competitors use Easyvoyage search 
engine technology for their website and obtain better market shares. 
During the semestrial meeting, the CEO rose the question of whether our user experience 
could be one of the reason/solution to our market share loss issue. He stated that so far, the 
company had focused on developing a better price comparison technology and strengthening 
their business partnership but that it hadn’t pushed the company’s growth as much as it was 
expected too. 
3.1.3. The parameters to take into consideration 
There are a few industry specific parameter that one must be aware of for a better 
apprehension of the E-tourism market: 
● The product (travel fares) are highly perishable and time sensitive. It isn’t a service 
but has its specificities, plane fares cannot be stocked, once the plane has left the 
ground the tickets are obsolete and there for the gain that they represented is lost. 
● Not all competitors are equal, due to certain legal vacuums and business arrangements 
a minority of competitors are able to have more aggressive marketing strategies. 
● Easyvoyage is one of the few travel specific price comparator that doesn't belong to 
either a Hotel group or airline company. 
3.2. Data collection methods 
The data used for this case study was collected through both qualitative and quantitative 
methods. The reason for this are twofold, first as said previously the FETBM is a very 
complex market with intricate parameters that must be understood to apprehend this research 
correctly and secondly because as it is the case in many case studies researched in the 
literature review quantitative research are often biased by the fact that the population knows it 
is being interrogated and observe and their for provides biased responses. 
The data was collected with the following strategy. First qualitative interviews were drive 
with industry experts such as Easyvoyage CEO and a E-tourism marketing specialist, in 
addition to which short interviews were conducted during the TOPresa conference to validate 
some theories regarding consumer behaviour in the online tourism market. These first 
42 
interviews were made to get a better apprehension of the company, the market if evolved in, 
gain insight into the consumer behaviours insight that had been observed so far and identify 
how to create the quantitative questionnaire. The interviews were semi directives interviews 
with questions organized by categories. This abled the interview to cover the overall facets of 
the research problematic but also made the questionnaire adaptable to the person interviewees 
speciality during the shorter interviews.2 
Once these interviews had been made, a questionnaire was created with the ambition to 
provide a clear insight into customers decision process and behaviour when purchasing travel 
fares online. Moreover, the questionnaire was developed to avoid biased response as much as 
possible. the guidelines followed to avoid bias from the respondents were to make the 
questionnaire as short and direct as possible. The idea was that the longer the questionnaire 
the more the interviewee would get an idea of the kind answer awaited from it, so to avoid 
this expectation bias the critical questions had to be asked when the respondent was still 
answering mechanically meaning the questionnaire could only take a few minutes to be 
completed. The questionnaires were sent to Easyvoyage’s customers pool, the population 
observed was reach via email, 30 questionnaires were filled and analysed. 
3.3. Data analysis methods 
The quantitative data was synthesised using google form and Microsoft excel. considering the 
analyses certain parameters were taken into consideration, these parameters will be further 
developed in the subpart 4, “reliability and validity” 
After the quantitative and qualitative data had been collected the results were compared to see 
whether they would resonate or differ. The intention with this confrontation was to invalidate 
the research and re-examination the population had the result differed too strongly to be 
judged relevant to the study. Fortunately, the results resonated and were estimated to be 
relevant to this research. 
  
                                               
2 Qualitative questionnaire: appendice 1 
43 
3.4. Reliability and validity 
The reliability of the data relies on two arguments, first the quantitative data and qualitative 
data are compatible and resonate to one another, meaning that one does not invalidate the 
other one. Secondly the result show to be compatible with the result found and studied in the 
literature review. 
Moreover, the chosen interviewees were picked specifically because of their compatibility 
with the case. Jean Pierre Nadir, the CEO of Easyvoyage is known in the French tourism 
market and his experience and position make him to be a credible source of information 
regarding the company as well as the customer and market. Lea Gury, although lesser know 
is a young digital marketer specialised in E-tourism and consumer behaviour, she has done 
multiple research on consumer behaviour in online tourism and worked for 3 of the most 
prominent companies of the FETBM. Lastly the professionals interrogated at the TOPresa 
conference were contributors to the conference who were speaking on digital marketing, user 
experience or consumer behaviour focused lectures. 
The question of data validity was raised with the quantitative data because of three 
parameters of the population that seemed potential problematic. 
First of all, male represent 57% of the interrogated population, then 80% of the interrogated 
population was born between 1980 and 2000 (Generation Y) and lastly almost 70% of the 
population indicated to travel more than once a year. These parameters did not seem to be 
representative of the targeted market, which put the research’s validity in jeopardy. 
After further research the lack of correspondence was explained by the fact that the 
population was a match to easy voyages audience. Thus far the interrogated population had 
been compared to the French population which is why characteristics such as the gender, age 
and travel frequency were problematic. These characteristics are an imperfect representation 
of the population but are nonetheless valid for this case study for they are representative of 
Easyvoyages customer pool. Given the compatibility of the researched population with the 
customer base, the research can be considered viable. 
  
44 
4. Findings  
The results finding, and analysis will unfold as follow: 
1. Quantitative research and results exposé 
This part allows a better understanding of the quantitative research process and results. The 
research process and its objectives will be thoroughly exposed and explained to allow a better 
understanding of the results and why they are or not conclusive. Followed by the analysis of 
the quantitative results, what they are, how they can be interpreted and what it means for the 
research. 
2. The E-tourism market, its challenges and stakes 
This part will expose the findings made during the interviews of the qualitative part of the 
research. The E-tourism industry will be thoroughly discussed and studied to identify the 
customers and retailer’s positions and challenges as well as the key opportunities to develop 
user experience. 
3. The online customer decision process 
The online customer decisions process theories developed in the literature review will be 
confronted to the results from the quantitative and qualitative data. First, to test if they 
correspond to the case at hand. Secondly to access what it means for our study at a larger 
scale. 
4. User experience potential for the E-tourism industry and Easyvoyage 
Using Both the quantitative and qualitative data, we will analyse and research the potential 
that user experience represent of the modern E-tourism industry, how it can be seen as an 
asset and what it implies for Easyvoyage. This part will use mainly the qualitative data and 
the quantitative will come as an empirical support. 
 
 
45 
4.1. Quantitative research and results exposé 
4.1.1. Demographic data 
It was necessary to collect demographic information on the research populations since as it 
was mentioned in the literature review, some studies could be affected by some demographic 
characteristic of their population. For example, in their study “Effects of reputation and 
website quality on online consumers' emotion, perceived risk and purchase intention: Based 
on the stimulus‐organism‐response model”, Jiyoung Kim and Sharron J. Lennon manifested 
that the preponderance of women amongst their studied population influenced their result. 
Although this does not invalidate the study it does however requires adjusting the findings 
accordingly. These findings obligate to gather information regarding some sensitive 
demographic parameters. 
Chart 1: Gender 
 
This chart displays the men to women ratio in our population, it is observed that men 
represent a majority of the interrogated population, this however isn’t considered to be 
unrepresentative of the researched case since these statistics coincide with Easyvoyages 
customer base. Moreover, preliminary data analysis made with excel show that for the 
questions regarding the user experience questioning, the proportions of men to women stayed 
the same as those from the overall population indicating that gender in fact did not have an 
impact on user experiences influence on consumer behaviour or purchase intention. 
46 
  
47 
Chart 2: Age group 
 
The literature review also indicated that the acquaintance with technology had an impact on 
user experiences ability to affect a customer. This assumption further followed that therefore 
the elder generation would be less reactive to user experience, implying that the age of the 
population would have to be considered during the study. 
The questioned population is, in a large majority, representative of the Y generation, not only 
does this virtually indicates that the individuals would have basic acquaintance and 
knowledge of technology, it is also representative of the Easyvoyage customer base. Again, 
considering the critical questions of the study, the age proportions are faithful to the overall 
population proportions, indicating that age also didn’t affect the influence of user experience 
on customers in the present research. 
  
48 
Chart 3: Socio-economic status 
 
The socio-economic status is the category with the most surprises. The majority of students 
and employee is no surprise as well as the absence of Farmers, however the lack of work 
woman and woman is surprising, and possibly to do the wrong definition of the term. The 
majority of Students and employee represents well the demographics observed at Easyvoyage 
and the absence of agricultural employee is explained by the difficulty know by this 
profession to take vacations due to their work requirements. 
Another demographical surprise seems to arise from the result provided by the unemployed 
population. Although one would suspect that this socio-professional category is the most 
value aware category, it was found that they are the most sensitive to user experience and the 
least likely to use a price comparator, which would theoretically be an economical help. 
Lastly due to the small population at hand, the only profession that will be studied are 
Student & interns, employees, intermediate professions and unemployed. 
  
49 
Chart 4, 5 and 6: Travel preferences 
 
The population at hand seam used to traveling, this data is surprising if confronted to the 
French population (which is the market at hand) however it is in line with a travel company’s 
customer base. This indication provides information about the customer habits regarding 
plane tickets purchase. Considering that 70% of the population travels by plan more than 
once a year, one could assume that they are in fact advised on online travel purchases. The 
following chart will confirm this hypothesis: 
 
This chart is in line with the idea that most of the questioned population is acquainted with 
the online travel purchase process, except for 6,4% of the population who favours ticket 
booking through agencies. The following table shows no correlation between the previous 
50 
demographics and the decision to purchase offline rather than online. Although it is important 
to note that none of them had chosen the price of a fare as an important element when 
purchasing a travel. 
Your age rank is: What is your socio-
professional status? 
How often do 
you travel by 
plane? 
Motives for which 
you travel: 
How do you 
book your 
tickets? 
Gen X (born before 
1965 et 1979) 
Manager Once a year Leisure Via an agency 
Gen Y (born 
between 1980 et 
2000) 
employee more than once a 
year 
Professional Via an agency 
 
 
Lastly the population was asked to rank their purchase criteria in order of importance, 1 being 
the most important and 4 the least important. This sorting process is easier to understand to 
interviewee and allows an easy scaling of the most chosen answers. To identify the 
importance of the criteria one must see the interviewees ranking as points. Once the data has 
been collected the “points” are added, since 1 indicates a high preference and 4 a low 
51 
preference, the criteria with the least “points” is considered to be the one that was favoured 
by the audience. 
Preference calculation: 
● Price range: 1x20 + 2x6 + 3x4 + 4x3 = 56 
● Trust in the airline and/or website: 1x9 + 2x10 + 3x10 + 4x6 = 75 
● Flight dates: 1x8 + 2x9 + 3x10 + 4x6 = 80 
● Fare length: 1x3 + 2x15 + 3x8 + 4x7 = 85 
The most important criteria overall seem to be a low price as it has been chosen as the 
number one criteria by 60,6% of the questioned population and a score of 56. The next 
criteria are the trust in the airline/website with a score of 75, followed by the dates of the 
flight with a score of 80 and finally the length of the fare with a score of 85. 
4.1.2. Consumer behaviour and user experience focused data 
As mentioned ahead the questions regarding user experience must be answered as candidly as 
possible to be able to evaluate the true effect of user experience on a customer behaviour and 
decision process. To do so only a few questions were asked and in a manner that gave the 
impression that their traveling habits were researched instead of their online purchase 
processes. Although some questions had to reference website layout or experience the these 
target questions were hidden among questions that either concerned their demographic and in 
one case an empty question that solely served the purpose of giving the impression that the 
study was focused on their travel habits (the motivation for travel question, this questions 
purpose isn’t to provide data but to preserve the focus of the interviewee on travel rather than 
on the purchase process). 
  
52 
Chart 7: Purchase barriers 
 
The purchase barriers propose the options that interviewees were offered when demanding 
which of the them would be the strongest barrier to purchase on a website. The results 
demonstrate that user experience can have negative externalities strong enough to prevent the 
purchase with the categories “The website is too difficult to navigate” and “The layout of the 
website is old/inadequate”. The 39,4% (=15,2+24,2) of the population that chose either of 
those 2 categories allow us to theorise two hypotheses. 
The first hypothesis is that the lack of attention to user experience can be a serious drawback 
for a business development, preventing potential customers to become active customers. 
The second hypothesis would be that the bad user experience is seen as more doubtful than 
the fact of not knowing the website/company or even than information that seems 
unbelievable, indicating that a positive user experience could push these 39,4% to disregard 
the absence of information about the purchase platform or even to neglect the doubtfulness of 
a given information. With further extrapolation this theory implies that an effective user 
experience could potentially help a business to gain acceptance within a market even if it is 
not well position to start with. Indicating that user experience could indeed be an asset in a 
competitive market. 
Lastly the “the price seem too good to be true” variable aimed to demonstrate the need of 
trust among customer when purchasing online, as we have demonstrated in the literature 
review, trust is an element that can be induced through user experience optimisation, 
53 
implying that these 24,2% of the interrogated population could be lured into purchasing on 
the said website with efficient user experience development. 
The category of “I don’t know this website” is the limit of user experience. Although a 
significant part of the population could be convinced by improved user experience, it is 
undeniable that user experience cannot solve every problem. Some customers still require to 
have heard of a product or a company to trust it and will require the intervention 
advertisement or public relations. 
Chart 8: Website layout and safety 
 
This question is directly related to user experience, it is one of the more upfront questions of 
the questionnaire. Since it was only possible to ask a few questions they had to be precise and 
well adjusted, unfortunately it was difficult to develop this question with more subtlety. 
Nonetheless the result is very conclusive, with a whopping 81,8% of the population admitting 
being sensible to a website layout when valuing the trustworthiness of a website. Considering 
the proportion of the interviewee considering safety as being a determining argument in a 
purchase decision, this data is very encouraging regarding the potential of user experience to 
influence a customer in its purchase decision. 
 
 
54 
4.1.3. Test result analysis  
The last question is decisive for the research and was complex to design. The aim of this last 
question is to see if user experience Werther it be in its all or in a single of its element, could 
push a customer to go against its pre-set values. 
As we have seen in the literature review as well as the previous questions, is that a customer 
hierarchize its priorities to than identify what decision to take regarding a purchase. The test 
was to see if user experience could push a customer to go against the hierarchy it had made 
for himself. 
The complexity of the questionnaire design resided almost completely in this question. Of 
course, the customer could not know that it was interrogated about user experience to avoid 
bias, but also it had to be conscious of the choices it was making along the questionnaire 
regarding its purchase preferences. 
During the qualitative interviews the user experience was often evoked when talking about 
one of easy voyages main competitors. This competitor uses another price comparing 
technology than Easyvoyage, their technology as well as their partnerships are less developed 
than Easyvoyage’s, in consequences this competitor offers almost always superior to 
Easyvoyage. Nonetheless, they possess a bigger market share and have a stronger customer 
base. This question was raised by the CEO, who theorized that it was probably the “price 
crossing thing”. After research on the competitor’s website, it was found that the “price 
crossing thing” is in fact a user experience hack in which the company suggest a price for a 
fare and adds another number next to it, this number is crossed and corresponds to what the 
price would have been in average. This is a website layout detail, that seems quite 
insignificant. But could this little UX hack push a customer to go against its ideas? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
55 
To test this theory the following question was asked to the interviewees: 
 
It’s important to highlight that in the questions regarding the purchase method, 63% of the 
population indicated to use price comparators, implying that price is a decision factor in their 
purchase process. Further on, when questioned about their purchase criteria, 60,6% of the 
population chose “the price is low” as main criteria and it was amongst the most important 
criteria for the overall population. So, it is safe to affirm that the price is a rather important 
criterion of a large majority of the population. 
  
56 
The result of the test where the following: 
 
At first sight the results don’t seem to be conclusive since the 63% of the population who 
chose the 80€ round trip could coincide with the 63% who chose price as the most important 
criteria. However, the excel analysis prove in fact that among the 36,4% of the population 
who have chosen the round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€, 7 of them usually book their 
flights on price comparators and 5 have chosen “price is low” as the main criteria of their 
purchase decision. Implying that 15,15% of the population at least and 21,21% at best, chose 
the more expensive option even though they had decided that price was a determining criteria 
in their purchase decision. The results are explainable by the fact that the crossed number 
gave the interviewees the impression that the “Roundtrip for 86€ reduced from 124€” was a 
better option because of the potential loss they have avoided. The price difference gave the 
impression that they would save 38€ when in fact they are spending 6€ more. This hack isn’t 
ground-breaking, it has been used for decades by retailers offline.  
The point here was to demonstrate that although there is more information available when 
purchasing online and even know the cognitive senses are more solicited, user experience can 
still act on the emotion triggers, in the benefit of retailers who can use it to develop their 
turnover or with further develop user experience, can hope to trigger purchases. 
 
57 
You are: Between these two offers, which appears to you 
as being the most advantageous?  
How do you book your 
tickets? 
Main purchase 
criteria  
Female Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
4 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online on the airline 
companies’ website 
3 
Female Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
1 
Female Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online on the airline 
companies’ website 
2 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
4 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
1 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
3 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online on the airline 
companies’ website 
2 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online on the airline 
companies’ website 
3 
Male Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online on the airline 
companies’ website 
2 
Female Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
2 
Female Round trip for 86€ reduced from 124€ Online via a price-
comparison website 
2 
58 
 
The results of this test imply that details in the website layout and therefore, the user 
experience, can go as far as pushing a customer to take a decision despite his pre-set values 
and need hierarchies. If a small detail in the user experience can trigger a change of heart in 
15% of online users, the potential of an entire user experience strategy is much stronger. 
 
4.2. User experience potential for the E-tourism industry and 
Easyvoyage 
This last subpart will be used to develop the hypothesis disclosed in the past subpart with the 
help of the qualitative data gathered during the individual interviews. 
4.2.1. Hypothesis 1: The lack of attention to user experience can be 
a serious drawback for a business development, preventing 
potential customers to become active customers 
This is the first hypothesis that can be drawn from the quantitative data, the concept is that a 
negative user experience could push a customer away from a purchase decision that had 
already been taken. In this research the interviewees are put in a purchase decision situation, 
there mindset is what ticket to choose and not should I purchase a ticket. Given that when 
questioned about what could prevent them from pursuing the purchase on a particular 
website, over 39% of them indicated user experience issue as the most important risk. The 
deductions that can be drawn for this research is that user experience should be considered by 
companies if not because it’s an asset, then at least because the lack thereof is a serious threat 
to the business sustainability. 
4.2.2. Hypothesis 2: In certain circumstances, user experience 
could push potential customers to neglect the absence of 
information the doubtfulness of a given information 
The present hypothesis ensues from the previous theory. For the 39% of the population who 
identified poor user experience as a non-purchase criterion. The implication isn’t only that 
bad user experience is a purchase turn off, but that it’s reputation potential is above a lack of 
59 
information and knowledge or than information identified as doubtful. Suggesting that a 
positive user experience could have the potential of pushing a potential customer to overlook 
the lack of viable information. In a purchase context where the decision process is mostly 
driven by cognitive capacities, the ability to go around them is a powerful asset. 
This theory was supported by both the interviews of Jean-Pierre Nadir as well as Lea Gury. 
Mr Nadir explained that the E-Tourism market, and specifically the discount online tourism 
market is so hyper competitive that customer is put in an “abundance effect”, this effect is a 
state of overwhelment due too much options that often drives individuals to take decision or 
actions against their better judgment. The idea is that there are so many actors providing so 
many options that the potential customer is not able to take a rational decision. The overdrive 
causes the customer to fall back on its emotional senses to make a decision. 
In her interview, Lea Gury added that user experience could be used to give the customers the 
impression that they know the company on a personal level, such strategies can be as simple 
as a bot chat that welcomes the customer and as complex as a full combination of community 
management and application development strategy. She agreed with the “abundance effect” 
argument and stated that therefore user experience is more developed by companies in the 
travel or fashion industry that are thriving online and are confronted to hyper competitivity 
problematics. 
4.2.3. Hypothesis 3: User experience can push customer to go 
against their pre-set priorities in a purchase decision 
The last and main hypothesis is drawn from hypothesis one and two as well as from the 
decision test made in the quantitative questionnaire. Considering the theories in which user 
experience has the potential of driving a potential customer away from a purchase decision as 
well as pushing it towards a purchase intention against its better judgement. And given the 
results of the final question for which at least 15% of the questioned customer sample chose 
the answer that was in opposition to the likeliness and priorities that they had indicated 
priorly. It is reasonable to theories that user experience has the potential to push a customer 
towards a purchase decision regardless of their pre-set priorities or purchase objective, in this 
case spending as little money as possible. 
60 
Moreover, this theory aligns with the opinions expressed in the individual interviews. For 
instance, Jean-Pierre Nadir stated that the E-tourism market was especially subject to such 
strategies because of its competitivity and pricing parameters. The competitivity has been 
explained before, but the pricing parameters needs to be explained. As said in the 
introduction, travel is a particular product to sell, it is a time sensitive and perishable product, 
it cannot be reused or recycled and therefore is lost for good when the night is passed or once 
the plane has left the airport. Every on booked ticket or hotel room is a loss, to prevent this 
loss prices must adapt, they go up or down depending on the time left and the demand for the 
product. This causes the prices to be very volatile and unpredictable for the customer. This 
phenomenon puts the customer in a state of tension, which is when one is more drawn to 
responding instinctively rather than rational, the emotional takes over the cognitive, allowing 
elements such as user experience to have a stronger leverage on the potential customer. 
In this case the simple crossed price hack had the potential to increase benefits by at least 
15%, simply by pushing customers to make a slight deviation from the criteria that they had 
set for themselves. 
  
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5. Discussion and Conclusions 
In conclusion, the literature review and the empirical research both indicated that it is 
reasonable to validate the hypotheses regarding the impact of user experience on customer 
purchase intention in a highly competitive market. 
The literature review case studies as well as the quantitative demonstrate that user experience 
does influence customers behaviour and decision processes. Its potential was demonstrated 
through its capacity to push the customer away and towards a potential purchase. 
Furthermore, James Wong and Laws research “Analysing the intention to purchase on hotel 
websites: a study of travellers to Hong Kong”, together with the questionnaire results, suggest 
the efficiency of user experience even in a hypercompetitive environment. 
From a theoretical standpoint, the theories exposed in the literature review together with the 
qualitative researches, support the empirical findings and the hypothesis that user experience 
can affect a customer’s purchase intention even/especially in a hypercompetitive market. 
5.1. Theoretical contributions 
5.1.1. Validation of the effect of user experiences influence on a 
customer decision process and purchase intention 
The research brought further demonstration of the influence of user experience on a 
customer’s perception and decision process as well as purchase intention. The theories that 
had been implied in some of the literature review case studies were tested and supported by 
both the qualitative and quantitative data. 
There is no doubt that user experience has the capacity of influencing the customer positively 
as well as negatively, in its information search and classification, during the decision process 
and until the final purchase decision. Although the case study didn’t allow primary data to 
support it, the theory according to which the post purchase experience also has a drive in the 
customers future purchase has been demonstrated in other researches and case studies used in 
the literature review. 
Overall it is reasonable to validate the theory that user experience influences customer 
behaviour and purchase intentions. 
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5.1.2. Validation of the notion of user experience as a 
differentiation factor 
The notion of user experience and its potential to differentiate a product, service or company 
from competitors, was introduced by Andrey Sirotkin & Bronan McCabe in their “The New 
Experience for Business: Why User Experience Is the Differentiation Strategy in the Cloud 
Context” research with the Cloud industry case study. 
This theory is debatable due to the importance of the industry to which it is applied. In reality 
this theory would potentially be difficult to prove for offline business. On the other hand, it is 
undeniable that user experience represents a great potential as a differentiation lever. 
It was demonstrated that user experience could influence the customer in how it perceived a 
product, its usefulness and purpose as well as how it approaches a company and the 
information delivered by the concerned company. UX gives retailers the opportunity to 
communicate information to their customers further than advertising or public relations. It 
allows the customer to develop an impression of closeness and relationship with a company 
or brand that the customer practically builds himself. 
Specifically, in online context and furthermore with mobile shopping, user experience allows 
companies to build a continuous relationship with the customer. Every time a customer 
reaches for its phones, goes on social media, on the internet, visits the online store … etc. All 
these are periods where a potential customer is within the reach of user experience. The 
development of apps and the push notification system is when the differentiation potential of 
user experience reaches its peak. 
This, for example, could be true for Easyvoyage, if every time a customer reaches for its 
phone, it gets a notification from the Easyvoyage app about past ravels or the weather from 
such and such destination, he is bound to go on easyvoyage.com when looking for a plane 
ticket. If by than the company has improved its user experience, there's a good chance that 
this time the customer will choose to purchase on easyvoyage.com. 
The real limit to user experiences capacity to differentiate a company from another is the 
consistency. If there is a vacuum at some stage of the purchase process, the customer will 
lose the relationship and impressions given by prior user experience and there for the entire 
strategy will lose grip on that individual. But if the strategy is consumer focused and covers 
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the entire purchase process, there is little doubt in its capacity to differentiate a product or 
brand in the eyes of the customer and even trigger a purchase decision.  
5.1.3. Introduction of user experiences effectiveness in a highly 
competitive market 
The demonstration of user experiences effectiveness when facing a highly competitive 
context drives from the demonstration of the two previous theories. 
Indeed, the ability to influence a customer in its behaviour, decision process and purchase 
intention is key in hyper competitive situations. One must be able to convince that the offer 
proposed is not only fitting to the customers’ needs but that it is the best fit, having influence 
on a customer’s impression and evaluation process is determining. Even more if the strategy 
can influence the customer into a purchase decision. 
However, this is true in every situation, it is in its differentiation leverage that user experience 
demonstrated to be an asset even in hyper competitivity. As mentioned by the interviewee, 
competitiveness creates overwelment of the cognitive capacities through an information and 
possibility flood. This phenomenon named the “abundance effect” paralyses the individual 
sense of rationality leading the customer to use its emotional related abilities. These unlike 
the cognitive senses, are influenced by instinct and impressions, they are more sensitive and 
therefore suggestive to aesthetics, images and impulses. Therefore, in plane tickets purchase 
tickets or online deals purchases are easily triggered by simple user experience hack s such as 
crossed number or push notifications, they create an impression of urge and push the 
customer further into stress purchase decisions.  
The capacity of user experience to be used as a differentiation lever or to trigger stress 
purchase not only make it an efficient element of a marketing strategy in a hyper competitive 
market, but until a certain point its efficiency increases with the competitiveness. 
 
 
 
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5.2. Practical implications 
The main theory alongside the previous theories that have led to it, have multiple practical 
implications. Not all of them have been verified by the research and therefore will not be further 
developed, this subpart will focus on two practical implication that are identified as crucial from a 
company development standpoint as well as from an industry stand point. 
5.2.1. The challenges of user experience strategy 
The mistake made by Easyvoyage was to overall neglect user experience. 
The issues with user experience in hyper competitive markets is that although a well-
developed user experience strategy is a strategic blessing for the company and a bad user 
experience is as damaging as a well thought out one is beneficial, the complete lack there off 
is also a risk. 
It was said before that UX can be as profiting as damaging to company, its brands and 
products. But the absence of user experience development is also a strategic risk, and it is the 
pitfall that Easyvoyage has fallen into. 
The two main challenges of user experience are proper strategy development and competitive 
upkeep. In an industry where the competition has developed user focused strategies, not 
developing one to in response will create a market share loss risk. User experience, like many 
other aspects of marketing can be compared to technology. Even if a company is leader of a 
market, if it doesn’t follow recent technological evolutions it will become obsolete. The same 
way Nokia loss its position on the mobile market by underestimating the smartphone battle, 
Easyvoyage lost its position on the French E-Tourism bargain market by underestimating the 
importance of user experience in a marketing strategy. 
Knowing when to develop the user experience and how to adapt it to a customer pool are the 
two main challenges of business today. 
 
 
65 
5.2.2. User experience as a low investment development strategy 
The last practical implication that must be covered is financial advantage presented by a user 
experience strategy as well as the stakes that it represents. 
Many of the user experience hacks that we have mentioned are low investment 
improvements, it’s a number on a line or two notifications a week. UX improvements are not 
product or processes development, they require little research and development, they are easy 
to develop, easy to test (an A/B testing is sufficient to evaluate a UX element effectiveness) 
and easy to deliver. 
This is both beneficial and detrimental for companies. Beneficial because it is an efficient yet 
economic development element, and it can be afforded by most businesses, detrimental 
because it can be afforded by most businesses. It is as easy for a company to develop it as it is 
for its competitors. User experience retains customers and provides the company with an 
identity, developing a user experience strategy too late can be detrimental to its efficiency. 
The best strategy would be to develop a low-profile user experience, if the strategy proves 
efficient on the customer pool one can let it prosper or develop it further. The company won’t 
have invested much and is ready to respond rapidly if competitors rise to the occasion and 
develop their own user focused strategy. 
5.2.3. User experience is industry sensitive 
Like most technologies and strategies, user experience has its limits. The most prominent 
limit highlighted in this case is industry sensitiveness. As Mr. Nadir has highlighted, user 
experience is most efficient when confronted to competitivity, a certain type of risk factor (in 
this case price change) and when associated to a potentially impulsive or instinctive purchase. 
Moreover, the limit of user experience is availability, it is only efficient if the customer is 
given the option. 
Therefor it is more efficient in online purchases context or for purchases that require less 
cognitive intervention. For instance, purchases that involve important financial consequences 
or that are long term purchases might not prove as responsive to user experience. The 
exception being the car industry, that capitalizes its entire communication and product 
developments around user experience. 
66 
5.2.4. Easyvoyage has a potential to grow in its markets 
The practical implication for Easyvoyage would be to develop its own user experience, its 
customer base seams responsive to it and is already relatively loyal. The technology used to 
create the travel offers are up to date with the market and it still has an important place 
amongst its competitors. The race isn’t already lost but it is time for the company to operate 
this change. 
The steps could be simple enough, using benchmarks and customer survey to develop a 
customer focused website. Provide a better post purchase experience, implement user 
experience hacks such as crossed comparative priced and push up notification on the app, 
would fit to their activity and be low investment improvements. 
5.3. Limitations and future research 
5.3.1. Limitations 
The research process as well as the Easyvoyage case study have been of great interest and 
fortunately provided much material to study. These elements make for a good research basis; 
however, some elements could have been handled differently or developed further. This 
subpart is dedicated to recommendation and comments on how it could have been done 
differently, followed by advices on how further researches could be handled. 
5.3.1.1. The population 
The first and main limitation of this research was the size of the population regarding the 
quantitative research. A larger population would have allowed more precise and more 
striking results. Plus, it would have allowed an analysis of the responses by generation and by 
socio-economic statuses that could have been relevant to the research. 
The population is viable because representative of the Easyvoyage customer base however it 
doesn’t representation realistic representation of the population in a larger sense which can 
rise question regarding the validity of the results in another context. Although these 
contestations can be denied since the demographic characteristics of the population did not 
seem to have impacted the study. Nonetheless it would have been better to avoid the question 
in its all with a more representative population. 
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Lastly the sampling of the population should have had featured another pool of individuals 
than solely Easyvoyage’s customer base. The research was to case study specific which 
limited the impact of its findings on other contests. To avoid this issue, it would have been 
better advised to research both Easyvoyage customer pool and a more random population to 
confront the result and be able to determine whether they were in fact case specific or not. 
5.3.1.2. research a less specific market 
As said previously, user experiences efficiency is industry and market specific, moreover the 
travel market has unique parameters and is hard to compare to other industries.  
The product as well as the pricing specificities make it a uniquely appropriate industry to 
develop user experience. This complicates the exploitation of the finding by another industry 
or company from another industry and it raises the question of the validity of the finding 
when applied to another context. 
Although other industries are similar enough to benefit from the present findings, such as the 
fashion retail industry and the high-end car industry, many other markets will not experience 
similar result as demonstrated via this research. 
This limit should be taken into consideration when questioning the applicability of user 
experience to another market or industry. If the parameters are similar to the exposed case 
study, then there shouldn't be any compatibility issues. However, if the concerned market 
experiences low competitivity, low prices evolution, a reduced number of competitors, the 
user experience efficiency would not be as important as it has been demonstrated through the 
present study. 
In addition to this, the French E-tourism bargain market, is very complex to understand and 
requires a lot of research prior to the actual research. So, if possible it would be advisable to 
test a less complex market, and if it must be than rely on market specialist that will be a 
crucial help in developing and apprehending the problematic. 
 
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5.3.2. Further research 
For further research the previously stated limitations should be taken into considerations. 
Beyond this study and demonstrations, many question are of interest regarding user 
experience.  
Firstly, its influence on customer behaviour, decision process and purchase intention could be 
studied with more precision in association with psychological and sociological studies. A 
better and more precise understanding could be of great help when developing user 
experience strategy as well as to unravel competitor’s strategies. 
Secondly, the potential of user experience as a purchase trigger requires further investigating 
and could prove to be a great asset for uprising retailers as well as companies looking to 
improve their profits beyond product development. additionally, this study could help 
identify whether product and service purchases are identically responsive to user experience 
or what product categories respond best to user focused strategies. 
Lastly, the question of which industries are the most sensitive to user experience would allow 
a complete research of its potential. This study would require a longer time frame and more 
important resources, nonetheless it is quite relevant to the current economic context and 
evolution perspectives, meaning the digitization of retail and most B to C industries. 
  
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Appendices: 
Appendices 1: Qualitative questionnaire 
Subject Question example 
Tourism market 
(E-commerce specific) 
 
● Could you describe the online travel market context 
economically and competitively? 
● Are there differences between the traditional and the 
online point of sale? And if yes, what are they? 
Customer decision making process ● How would you describe the customers decision 
process during the purchase phase? 
● What are the customer-specific elements that 
determine the purchase? 
● What are the external factors that may affect decision-
making? (conjuncture, Marketing, branding) 
User experience ● How would you define UX? 
● What use do you do of UX? 
User experience influence on decision 
making 
● Do you think that UX is a determining factor in the 
purchase decision? (In particular pre-purchase UX) 
● Do you think UX can push the potential consumer to 
buy beyond his priorities? 
Importance and impact of UX on 
customer in the online travel buying 
process 
● The online tourism market is a fiercely competitive 
market, do you think UX can have an impact in this 
context? 
● Do you think online UX has as much Crip on the 
customer as on site UX? 
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