Product experience and customer experience: what are the differences?

In a world where omnichannel has become the norm, brands are doubling their efforts to nurture every touchpoint with their customers. Seamless navigation, responsive customer service, fast delivery… customer experience is at the heart of all strategies. Yet, one key element is often overlooked: product experience. Often confused with customer experience or relegated to the background, it nevertheless constitutes one of its most decisive foundations.

Because even before the purchase, it's the quality of product information—its clarity, consistency, and appeal—that guides, reassures, or hinders a consumer. What if, ultimately, every good customer experience started there?

The aim of this article is to clarify the distinction between product experience and customer experience, to demonstrate how they are inseparable, and to explore how Product Information Management software (PIM) can play a strategic role in this synergy.

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Product Experience and Customer Experience: Definitions and Differences

Often confused, product experience and customer experience refer to two distinct but complementary realities, essential for building an efficient and coherent purchasing journey.

Product experience: definition

Product experience refers to all interactions between a consumer (or prospect) and information related to a product . It includes tangible elements: visuals, descriptions, technical characteristics, benefits, usage data, and even customer reviews. This experience is manifested through various points of contact: online product sheets, in-store packaging, paper catalogs, marketplaces, etc.

To be effective, the product experience is based on three fundamental pillars:

• Data quality (accuracy, completeness);
• Their consistency between channels;
• Their contextualization according to the target or the distribution channel.

A successful product experience reassures, guides and encourages purchase.

Customer experience: definition

Customer experience encompasses the entire journey a person takes in their relationship with a brand—before, during, and after the purchase. This includes website navigation, customer service, ordering, delivery, tracking, after-sales service, and more.

It is distinguished by its emotional, relational and transactional nature, and reflects a brand's ability to create a fluid, pleasant and consistent relationship with its customers, across all points of contact.

What distinguishes product experience from customer experience?

Although complementary, these two notions have different scopes.

• Product experience is centered around product information;
• The customer experience is centered on the person and their overall feeling towards the brand.

Product experience fuels and structures the customer experience. It's often the first link in the chain: without reliable and engaging product information, it's difficult to build a satisfying customer experience.

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Product experience: the invisible foundation of customer experience

Often underestimated, product experience shapes brand perception, influences purchasing and ensures a seamless experience across all channels.

The impact on brand perception

The product experience is often the first point of contact between a customer and a brand. A well-constructed product sheet—clear, comprehensive, and visually appealing—immediately conveys an image of seriousness, professionalism, and trust. 

It's a silent but incredibly effective form of branding: a well-presented product enhances the brand's overall image. Conversely, incomplete, confusing, or inconsistent product content across different channels (e-commerce site, marketplace, PDF catalog, etc.) can lead to distrust and abandonment. This misalignment gives the impression of a lack of rigor, even reliability.

Influence on purchasing behavior

Even before testing or touching a product, consumers form an opinion based on its digital content. 

If the visuals are missing or unclear, if the description is too technical or vague, or if the features don't meet expectations, the purchasing decision can be immediately put off. 

Conversely, an enriched, contextualized, and well-structured product sheet promotes projection, reassures, and more easily triggers action. The product experience therefore acts as an accelerator or a brake on conversion.

A seamless experience delivered by omnichannel consistency

Today, 73% of consumers use multiple channels before purchasing (Fevad study, 2024). They view a product online, read reviews on a marketplace, and then finalize the purchase in-store or via mobile. 

In this context, they expect perfect consistency between all points of contact. Reliable, consistent and always up-to-date product information has become a prerequisite for trust. For brands, this means total control of product data. This is where PIM (Product Information Management) comes in: it centralizes, structures and distributes this information seamlessly across all channels.

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The key role of PIM in building the product experience

The PIM plays a central role in orchestrating the product experience, ensuring consistency, responsiveness and relevance of information across all channels.

Centralize and structure product information

PIM (Product Information Management) acts as a single repository for all a company's product data. It centralizes information from multiple sources (ERP, marketing, suppliers) and structures it coherently according to the requirements of each sales channel or type of persona. This common base helps avoid dispersion, duplication and errors. Every piece of data is mastered, qualified and ready to be enriched.

Facilitate enrichment, consistency and multi-channel distribution

Once the information has been structured, the PIM facilitates editorial and visual enrichment (photos, videos, translations, specific attributes, storytelling, etc.). It also enables product sheets to be automatically adapted to different distribution contexts: Amazon, Shopify, B2B site, international distributor... Each channel has its own requirements, formats and regulatory constraints: the PIM orchestrates all this seamlessly. The result: content that's consistent, contextualized and always up-to-date.

Gain in responsiveness and reliability

Thanks to this centralization and automation, teams save precious time on updates, product launches or sales campaigns. The risk of errors is reduced, consistency is ensured, and lead times are shortened. The PIM becomes a real lever for commercial agility, with a direct impact on the quality perceived by the end customer.

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Conclusion

In an omnichannel ecosystem where customer experience has become a strategic differentiator, product experience can no longer be relegated to the background. 

Much more than just an informative component, it is the foundation upon which a smooth, consistent, and effective customer relationship is built. A well-constructed, up-to-date, contextualized, and enriched product sheet creates trust, facilitates the purchasing decision, and reinforces the positive perception of the brand. 

Yet without rigorous control of product information, any customer experience strategy risks collapse. This is where the PIM becomes a key ally: it centralizes, structures and feeds product content across all channels. By integrating PIM at the heart of their strategy, brands gain in efficiency, responsiveness and reliability, while meeting the growing expectations of consumers. Product experience and customer experience are not opposites: they complement and reinforce each other.