The Digital Customer Journey

Few words in corporate marketing are used as vaguely as Customer Journey. The term wanders through departments like a holy grail—invoked often, understood rarely. But is there such a thing as the one Customer Journey? What hides behind the phrase? And how does the journey change in the mobile age with its swarm of touchpoints?

From linear funnels to networked journeys

Classical models drew a neat line from first awareness to ringing cash register. The smartphone broke that line. Screens multiplied, attention splintered, and the path to purchase began to zigzag. What used to be one road is now a small map book, with detours, loops, and side streets that open or close depending on context.

AIDA — origins, stages, strengths, limits

One of the first attempts to map buying decisions was AIDA, developed in the late 19th century by Elmo Lewis. The acronym marks four stages that can lead to a purchase.

Attention — first you catch the eye.
Interest — then you nurture that spark into curiosity about the product.
Desire — curiosity ripens into wanting.
Action — the decision turns into a deed.

Because interventions are possible at each stage, AIDA sits squarely in advertising psychology. It’s tidy and linear, which makes it a durable tool in sales training even today. That tidy line is also the chief complaint: life is messier. AIDA offers a helpful sketch, but only a surface sketch, of how people actually buy.

Procter & Gamble and the Moments of Truth

A major step in visualizing the Customer Journey came in 2005, when Procter & Gamble CEO Alan G. Lafley introduced the Moments of Truth. The idea is simple: three decisive moments in the relationship between seller and buyer.

Stimulus — the customer meets a trigger: an ad in a magazine, a mention on TV.
First Moment of Truth (FMOT) — at the Point of Sale, the customer confronts the product—packaging on a shelf, for instance—and decides for or against it.
Second Moment of Truth (SMOT) — the first use. Experience happens: good, bad, or mixed.

In 2006, Pete Blackshaw (also P&G) added the missing piece: Third Moment of Truth (TMOT). After using the product, does the customer recommend it? Review it? Mention it in social media? That public echo shapes future demand.

In its classic form the model assumes an in-store decision. It was built for fast-moving, low-priced consumer goods—P&G’s home turf—where distance selling historically mattered less. It clarifies key moments, yet leaves digital pathways mostly offstage.

McKinsey’s Customer Decision Journey — from initial set to loyalty loop

Two forces the earlier models underrate: prior experience and the signal of the brand itself. McKinsey’s Customer Decision Journey brings both into the frame.

Initial consideration set — a short list of brands gets invited to the party.
Active evaluation — the shopper searches, reads, asks; brands are added or dropped. This tends to describe high-involvement decisions—products with a big price tag or a strong emotional charge.
Purchase — the decision lands.
Experience — product use shapes the next decision. Loyalty may follow—or not.

When loyalty clicks, a loyalty loop forms. On the next purchase, the customer may skip active evaluation entirely and return to the chosen brand. Buy an Apple iPhone and love it? The next time, you may go straight for a MacBook without revisiting the whole field.

The core message: you cannot analyze buying without the shadow of previous experience.

Google and the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)

So where is the digital age in all of this? Google answered by stitching a new moment in front of FMOT. The Zero Moment of Truth is the very first encounter: a search query, a friend’s post, an influencer’s video, a blog mention—any spark that starts the investigation.

The moments also talk to one another. A positive SMOT raises the odds of a loud TMOT (sharing), which boosts the product’s chance of showing up at the next ZMOT (search or social discovery). The loop tightens.

The practical weight of ZMOT is simple: the place you learn about a product and the place you buy it can be—and often are—different. Google has reported that roughly 88% of U.S. consumers research a product via a search engine before buying. Information and transaction have divorced geography.

A short detour: search behavior and mobile Micro-Moments (Google)

Not every search equals purchase intent. Google distinguishes four motivations that sit behind queries:

Get to know — learning the basics or digging into specs.
Want to go — finding a place nearby: a Thai restaurant, a barber, a store.
Want to do — how-to content and inspiration: recipes, repairs, tutorials.
Want to buy — ready to purchase; price and service details matter most.

These Micro-Moments are motivations, not stages in sequence. They can appear in any order, or alone.

Cundari’s Customer Purchase Journey (2015) — an integrated map

The most complete map in this survey is the Customer Purchase Journey proposed by Cundari in 2015. It keeps the Moments of Truth, folds in Google’s ZMOT, and respects modern search behavior. The phases:

Awareness — interest wakes.
Consideration — a working set of brands and products forms; the search begins.
Evaluation — ZMOT in action: information builds preference. Every new fact can tilt that preference and even reshape the consideration set. Non-linear by design.
Purchase — FMOT: the decision becomes a transaction.
Experience — SMOT: using the product sets the tone for what comes next.
Loyalty loop — satisfaction shortens the path; the next time, the buyer may skip Consideration and Evaluation entirely. Dissatisfaction can eject the brand from the set.

The model’s strength is its feedback: experience reshapes preference; preference reshapes the set; the set frames the next search. It breathes.

What to take from the models

AIDA shows the marching rhythm of persuasion. P&G names the decisive encounters. McKinsey adds memory and brand gravity. Google moves the first meeting online and multiplies it. Cundari integrates the lot and admits the loops. No single diagram captures every case; together they give you a fuller compass.

The Digital Customer Journey – From models to practice

Now the work begins. Build personas that reflect real lives. Sketch individual journeys: how, exactly, do we want to reach prospects and turn them into customers? Demographics, life stage, education, and affinity to digital media will produce very different paths.

From those individual journeys, distill the essence into a marketable funnel that fits your acquisition goals. The map is good. Making it move is the marketer’s craft.

The Digital Customer Journey – Conclusion

We took a quick historical circuit through the big models of the Customer Journey. Of these, Cundari’s Customer Purchase Journey best gathers today’s foundations: digital media, ZMOT, the loyalty loop, and dynamic feedback from SMOT back into what counts as a relevant set. Keep the caveat close, though: any model is a map, not the territory. Use it to ask better questions, then go watch real customers in the wild.

Sources and further reading

For deeper dives, look to the original descriptions: Elmo Lewis on AIDA; Procter & Gamble’s Moments of Truth via Alan G. Lafley and Pete Blackshaw; McKinsey’s Customer Decision Journey; Google on ZMOT and Micro-Moments; and Cundari (2015) on the Customer Purchase Journey.