arXiv:2608.08395econ.THcs.AI2026-08

AI代理购物让复杂偏好也能高效匹配,避免人工搜索失效。

From Product Search to Preference Articulation: The Economics of Agentic Commerce

论文配图:From Product Search to Preference Articulation: The Economics of Agentic Commerce
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用AI代理筛选海量商品,通过迭代优化偏好表达
  • 当偏好复杂度超阈值时,人工搜索失效,但代理搜索仍有效
  • 适合关注体验、愿与AI协作的消费者和平台设计者

生成式AI正将数字消费从浏览转向代理搜索,即消费者将产品发现任务委托给AI代理。我们对比了人工搜索(精准评估有限商品集)与代理搜索(通过噪声化的偏好与商品表示筛选广泛目录)。偏好复杂度指在搜索前难以言明但检视后易判断的满意维度数量。消费者注意力有限,选择搜索强度:手动检视数量或与代理协同的偏好优化深度。研究发现:第一,人工搜索在有限复杂度阈值后崩溃——检视停止,错配达无搜索基准,平台收入归零;而代理搜索可避免此崩溃,一旦优化值得投入,随复杂度上升仍持续有效,错配低于无搜索基准,收入保持正数,尽管表达成本和错配可能上升。第二,平台按转化收入排序策略,但消费者也承担搜索成本。当人工检视足够便宜时,代理搜索在消费者自愿采纳前已成收入优势,导致理性滞后的采用行为。第三,在代理参与条件下,平台可能对注意力预算更大的消费者分配更低保真度信息,因其可通过额外优化弥补噪声表示,形成逆向保真度配置。因此,代理商业将稀缺从商品检视转移到偏好表达,消费者的意愿与能力成为自愿使用及平台保真度设计的核心。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Generative AI is shifting digital commerce from browsing toward agentic search, in which consumers delegate product discovery to AI agents. We compare manual search, which accurately evaluates a limited product set, with agentic search, which screens a broad catalog through noisy representations of preferences and products. Preference complexity is the number of satisfaction-relevant dimensions that are difficult to articulate before search but readily evaluated upon inspection. Consumers have finite attention and choose search intensity: products inspected manually or preference-refinement depth with an agent. We obtain three findings. First, manual search collapses beyond a finite complexity threshold: inspection ceases, mismatch reaches the no-search benchmark, and platform revenue falls to zero. Agentic search avoids this collapse. Once refinement becomes worthwhile, it remains worthwhile as complexity rises; mismatch stays below the no-search benchmark and revenue remains positive, although articulation effort and mismatch may increase. Second, platforms rank the regimes by conversion revenue, whereas consumers also bear search expenditure. When manual inspection is sufficiently inexpensive, agentic search becomes revenue-superior before consumers voluntarily adopt it, creating an adoption lag in which consumers rationally continue manual search. Third, conditional on agentic participation, platforms may assign lower fidelity to consumers with larger attention budgets because they can offset noisier representations through additional refinement, yielding an inverted fidelity allocation. Agentic commerce thus shifts scarcity from product inspection to preference articulation, making consumers' willingness and ability to interact central to voluntary use and platform fidelity design.

AI代理电商经济偏好表达用户行为

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