ExperienceCurve

Just found a great paper at Stanford Does the Quality of Online Customer Experience Create a Sustainable Competitive Advantage for E-commerce Firms?

Just a quick synopsis, yes it does lead to competitive advantage, and of the five factors they look at:

1. web site usability
2. customer confidence in the web business
3. selection of goods and services offered on the site
4. the effectiveness of relationship services such as virtual community building and site personalization
5. the extent of price leadership practiced by the firm

The two factors that most contribute to competitive advantage is “customer confidence” and “effectivness of relationship services”. Interesting that web site usability did not contribute to competitive advantage (in this study). There is an interesting discussion about this specifically at Diary of a Superfluous Man