The study investigates how Large Language Models (LLMs) acting as surrogate consumers are influenced by marketing pricing cues such as just‑below pricing and promotional framing. Using a tool called "Tool‑Lab" to trace information acquisition, the researchers found that when no cost is imposed, pricing cues rarely mislead LLMs, but when acquisition costs are introduced under a vague goal prompt, LLMs tend to omit important diagnostic attributes and make suboptimal choices similar to human heuristics. The findings suggest that marketing heuristics in AI‑driven shopping are shaped more by storefront information architecture than by inherent LLM limitations.
By Davood Wadi, Yu Ma
arXiv:2607. 25253v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Online recommendation has traditionally taken place after a user enters a platform, which determines the candidate pool and the ranking shown to the user.
By Deyao Hong, Kehan Zheng, Qian Li, Jun Zhang, Jie Jiang, Hongning Wang
arXiv:2510. 12049v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We quantify the short-term impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on sales performance through a series of large-scale randomized field experiments involving millions of users and products at a leading cross-border online retail platform.
By Lu Fang, Zhe Yuan, Kaifu Zhang, Dante Donati, Miklos Sarvary
A commercial incentive need not enter the final ranking algorithm to affect a shopping assistant's recommendation: it may instead influence which preference question the assistant asks. We make this d...
arXiv:2606. 30863v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agents typically assume an expert user -- one with well-formed preferences about what they want -- and default to clarifying questions whenever the task is underspecified.
By Irena Saracay, Ludwig Schmidt, Carlos Guestrin
arXiv:2609.36614v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: A commercial incentive need not enter the final ranking algorithm to affect a shopping assistant's recommendation: it may instead influence which prefe...
By Jiapeng Li
User experience is a first-class objective in industrial e-commerce recommender systems (RS). Post-ranking strategies, which govern diversity, similarity, and exposure over a ranked list, are widely deployed in industrial RS for their simplicity and low serving cost.
arXiv:2607. 17719v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: User experience is a first-class objective in industrial e-commerce recommender systems (RS).
By Hanchen Yang, Kaiwen Yang, Junpeng Zhuang, Yang He, Keting Cen, Bochao Liu, Zhongbo Sun, An Liu, Zhongteng Han, Chenyi Lei
arXiv:2607. 17719v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: User experience is a first-class objective in industrial e-commerce recommender systems (RS).
By Hanchen Yang, Kaiwen Yang, Junpeng Zhuang, Yang He, Keting Cen, Bochao Liu, Zhongbo Sun, An Liu, Zhongteng Han, Chenyi Lei
arXiv:2605. 00737v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Agentic AI architectures augment LLMs with external tools, unlocking strong capabilities.
By Qinyuan Wu, Soumi Das, Mahsa Amani, Arijit Nag, Seungeon Lee, Krishna P. Gummadi, Abhilasha Ravichander, Muhammad Bilal Zafar
arXiv:2606. 12924v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a modular two-agent simulation framework for evaluating conversational shopping assistant architectures.
By Jetlir Duraj, Jayanth Yetukuri, Shuang Zhou, Dhruv Varma, Rui Kong, Ishita Khan, Qunzhi Zhou
CAVEAT is a new benchmark that tests computer‑use agents (CUAs) in nine online marketplace environments where platform incentives may steer agents away from user goals. The study finds that agents succeed in choosing user‑optimal products only 78.6% of the time in neutral settings, dropping to 17.3% when steering mechanisms are active. By diagnosing three failure points—priority distortion, premature narrowing of options, and early commitment—CAVEAT-Harness interventions raise user‑optimal purchasing success by 55.0%.
By Yuxuan Li, Will Epperson, Wesley Deng, Zezhou Huang