Purchase Intent
Purchase intent is defined as the thoughts directing a customers’ decisions or actions toward purchasing a particular product or service. It is the customer’s in-the-moment shopping objective, such as “I’m going to buy a jacket”. In the eCommerceeCommerce, also known as electronic commerce, digital commerce, or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling o... More space, purchase intent is considered to be the true ideal of what digital merchandisers want to understand and influence. Customer purchase intent can span sessions as a potential digital customer weaves their way towards a purchase, and therefore it’s something each session needs to immediately support.
Today, an AI-powered eCommerce personalization platform such as Reflektion allows merchandisers to not only understand customer intent in-the-moment, but actually influence it by continuously displaying the most relevant content to them in real-time and across the digital touchpoints that matter most.
It’s important to understand the relationship between customer’s purchase intent and preferences. Customer preferences are the preferred variables of a particular shopper. Variables such as colors, sizes, brands, and materials can become preferences as correlations are identified. Over time these preferences can become reliable predictors of customer purchase intent—what the customer is actually trying to purchase. The overall intent of a customer can, therefore, be influenced by preferences.