Well, I'm not sure this gives intuition, but you could ask yourself what properties you want from a function that computes signed volume and go from there.
Suppose we have such a function $d: \mathbb{R}^n \times \cdots \times \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$. That is, given points $x_1,...,x_n$, the volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are the lines between $0$ and $x_k$ is given by $d(x_1,...,x_n)$.
We expect that it would be linear in each variable, that is
$d(x_1,...,x_k+y_k,...,x_n) = d(x_1,...,x_k,...,x_n) + d(x_1,...,y_k,...,x_n)$ and
$d(x_1,...,\lambda x_k,...,x_n) = \lambda d(x_1,...,x_k,...,x_n)$. In other words, $d$ is multilinear.
We expect that switching the order of two variables switches the sign of $d$, that is $d(\cdots, x_i,\cdots, x_j, \cdots) = -d(\cdots, x_j,\cdots, x_i, \cdots)$. In other words, $d$ is alternating.
If you grind through the details, you can show that you must have
$d(x_1,...,x_n) = \det \begin{bmatrix} x_1 & \cdots & x_n\end{bmatrix} d(e_1,...,e_n)$, where $\det \begin{bmatrix} x_1 & \cdots & x_n\end{bmatrix}$ is the usual formula involving permutations and signs.
The point is that by just requiring multilinearity and alternation, we must have a scaled version of the usual determinant formula. This may not seem like a big deal, but it means the notion of volume is encapsulated by being multilinear and alternating (and some reference volume).
At the risk of mind-numbing repetition, if $\delta$ is another alternating, multilinear function (on $n$ copies of $\mathbb{R}^n$), we must have
$\delta(x_1,...,x_n) = \alpha \det \begin{bmatrix} x_1 & \cdots & x_n\end{bmatrix} $, where $\alpha = \delta(e_1,...,e_n)$. To hammer it home, the space of such functionals has dimension one.
We expect that the 'unit cube' has volume one, so we single out one of these objects and call it $\operatorname{vol}$. The above considerations shows that
$\operatorname{vol}(x_1,...,x_n) = \det \begin{bmatrix} x_1 & \cdots & x_n\end{bmatrix} $.
If we have a matrix $B$, then the volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are
$B e_1,...,B e_n$ is given by $\operatorname{vol}(B e_1,...,B e_n) = \det B$.
Now consider another such object, $\lambda_A(x_1,...,x_n) = \operatorname{vol}(Ax_1,...,Ax_n)$. We can check that it is alternating and multilinear, so we must have $\lambda_A = \alpha \operatorname{vol}$ for some $\alpha$. We can figure out $\alpha$ by looking at the 'unit cube', that is,
$\lambda_A(e_1,...,e_n) = \operatorname{vol}(Ae_1,...,Ae_n) = \det A = \alpha \operatorname{vol}(e_1,...,e_n) = \alpha$. In other words,
$\lambda_A = (\det A) \operatorname{vol}$.
In particular, we have shown
$\det (AB) = \lambda_A(B e_1,...,B e_n) = \det A \operatorname{vol}(B e_1,...,B e_n) = \det A \det B$.
In other words, instead of thinking of $\det (AB)$, think of the scaled volume operator $\lambda_A$ operating on $B$ (or rather the columns of $B$),
and that $\lambda_A$ is essentially $\det$ except for a scaling factor.