If an AI shopping bot asks you a few smart questions, it's way better than showing you a million products you don't want.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6428938
The Takeaway
In the 'infinite shelf' era of e-commerce, we assume more choice is better. This research proves that 'solicitation depth' (asking questions) scales much better than 'assortment breadth,' meaning a short conversation is more likely to find your perfect product than a giant list of recommendations.
From the abstract
The e-commerce landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift from search-based shopping to agentic purchasing. AI shopping agents are replacing keyword search with multi-round conversations, in which the agent learns what customers want through targeted questions and then presents a tailored assortment of recommendations. We develop the solicit-then-suggest framework to model this emerging paradigm of agentic purchasing. An agent conducts $m$ rounds of targeted solicitation in a $d$-dimensional pr