Papers for

e-commerce platform designers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

How the order of AI summaries shapes product opinions on Amazon

First Impressions: How Placement Shapes the Influence of AI Summaries

Abstract: AI-generated summaries increasingly mediate how people interpret information across platforms, including product reviews on e-commerce sites. Using Amazon's AI summaries as a case study, we conducted a preregistered, randomized experiment (N = 278) comparing how AI summaries and user reviews shaped product perceptions, and how their influence varied with valence and presentation order. We found that both AI summaries and user reviews influenced participants' opinions, with negative summaries having a larger effect than positive ones. Presentation order was the most important factor: the first source anchored judgment and only user reviews could displace an existing anchor. Although participants reported preferring user reviews, they often underestimated the influence of AI summaries on their judgments. Our findings show how the placement of AI summaries shapes user perception and highlight opportunities to design interfaces that support more deliberate judgments about when to rely on summaries and when to examine the underlying content directly.

Mon 14 SeptHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
People often see AI-generated summaries and user reviews when shopping online. This study found that both types of information change how people think about products, but the first thing they read has the biggest effect. Negative summaries influenced opinions more than positive ones, and only user reviews could change someone's mind after they saw a summary first. The researchers also discovered that people liked user reviews more but didn't realize how much the AI summaries affected their judgment.
Open 2609.14900v1