Customer Experience in E-Commerce: A Systematic Review of Metrics, Models, and the Role of AI

Abstract

As digital commerce platforms grow increasingly intelligent and engaging, delivering a superior customer experience (CX) has become a strategic compulsion. Despite expanding interdisciplinary interest, clarity remains limited regarding how CX is conceptualized, measured, and transformed by emerging technologies. This systematic literature review synthesizes findings from 82 peer-reviewed studies published between 1980 and 2025 using the PRISMA 2020 framework to explore four key questions: how CX is defined in e-commerce, which dimensions influence it, what methods are used to evaluate it, and how technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), agentic AI, and automation are used. The review reveals a shift from traditional, transactional, and usability-based interpretations towards dynamic, emotional, and co-created experiences. Trust, system-driven personalization, user autonomy, and customer engagement emerge as the four central influencing factors due to technological advances in AI and Agentic AI. Methodologically, CX research has evolved from survey-based models to structural equation modeling, sentiment analysis, and AI-integrated frameworks. Notably, intelligent systems are increasingly acting as co-creators of customer journeys, shaping real-time personalization and emotional resonance. This review offers a consolidated framework for understanding CX in the modern e-commerce context, provides actionable insights for platform designers, and proposes a future research agenda centered on factors and methods describing AI, agency, and emotional intelligence.