Priming in Search: A Large-Scale Field Experiment on the Impact of Popular Search Genres in Mobile Shopping

Mobile commerce interfaces impose substantial search costs because of limited screen space and input constraints. To mitigate these frictions, platforms increasingly deploy search interface features that prime users with aggregated popular queries. Despite its growing use, the impact of such priming mechanisms on consumer behavior remains underexplored. We investigate the impact of one such design, referred to as the popular ranking search aid (PRSA), which surfaces a curated list of popular search genres derived from aggregated consumer queries. In collaboration with Meituan, a leading mobile services platform in China, we conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment to examine how exposure to PRSA alters consumer search and purchase behavior in a food delivery context. We find that PRSA facilitates query generation by prompting more exploratory (broad) and fewer goal-directed (specific) searches. This shift in search behavior increases both product views and purchases. Session-level analyses further reveal contrasting effects on search costs; consumers exposed to PRSA spend less time generating queries, forming shorter queries that align more closely with the recommended genres, yet they exert greater effort in exploring a broader set of products. These findings highlight a cognitive trade-off; although PRSA reduces cognitive effort during query generation, it increases decision effort during product exploration. This study contributes to the literature on search interface design, priming, and mobile commerce by uncovering how genre-based query aids reshape consumer decision pathways and platform outcomes.

History: Wonseok Oh, Senior Editor; Jianqing Chen, Associate Editor.

Funding: This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72502151, W2411062, 72071029, and 72231010] and the Ministry of Education, Singapore, Academic Research Fund Tier 1 [Grant RG44/24].

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2024.1041.