group_concat in SQL Server 2012 con ORDER BY un'altra colonna

Non sono sicuro che sarà più veloce, ma ecco una versione alternativa in cui non ti unisci agli purchases due volte nel STUFF() :

select customer_id,
  min(purchased_at) as first_purchased_at,
  stuff ((select ',' +  p2.product 
          from
          (
            select product, customer_id,
                ROW_NUMBER() over(partition by customer_id, product order by purchased_at) rn,
                ROW_NUMBER() over(partition by customer_id order by purchased_at) rnk   
            from purchases
          ) p2 
          where p2.customer_id = p1.customer_id
            and p2.rn = 1
          group by p2.product, rn, rnk
          order by rnk
          for XML PATH('') ), 1,1,'') AS all_purchased_products  
from purchases p1
group by customer_id;

Vedi SQL Fiddle con demo

Risultato:

| CUSTOMER_ID |               FIRST_PURCHASED_AT | ALL_PURCHASED_PRODUCTS |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|           1 |      June, 01 2012 00:00:00+0000 |           apples,pears |
|           2 |      June, 01 2012 00:00:00+0000 |                 apples |
|           3 | September, 02 2012 00:00:00+0000 |   pears,apples,bananas |