Customer Experience as the Key to Digital Entrepreneur Success

Abstrak

This study investigates the role of Customer Experience (CX) as a key determinant of success among digital entrepreneurs in Indonesia’s rapidly expanding digital economy. Adopting an explanatory quantitative design with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM-PLS), data were collected from 90 active online consumers interacting with digital-based businesses through platforms such as Shopee, Tokopedia, Instagram Shop, and TikTok Shop.

The empirical findings confirm that CX significantly influences customer loyalty (β = 0.673, p < 0.001) and, in turn, loyalty has a substantial effect on business performance (β = 0.582, p < 0.001). Furthermore, customer loyalty mediates the indirect relationship between CX and business performance (β = 0.392, p < 0.001), indicating that superior customer experience enhances firm performance primarily through building loyal customer relationships. Among the CX dimensions, emotional engagement and personalization emerge as dominant drivers of loyalty, while digital convenience reinforces satisfaction and retention.

Theoretically, the study extends digital entrepreneurship literature by empirically validating the CX–Loyalty–Performance causal chain, demonstrating that technological innovation alone does not guarantee entrepreneurial success without meaningful and consistent customer experiences. Practically, the findings highlight that sustainable digital business growth requires entrepreneurs to integrate emotional connection, data-driven personalization, and seamless digital service delivery into their strategic frameworks.