Generative Search: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

The authors thank Meituan for providing the empirical setting and data support. For helpful comments, the authors thank Xinlei Chen, Yuxin Chen, Ruobing Han, Ying Lei, Yang Li, Emaad Manzoor, Ilya Morozov, Jiwoong Shin, Tianshu Sun, Raphael Thomadsen, Juanjuan Zhang, and Shuo Zhang; seminar participants at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, Chongqing University, Hunan University, Google, University of British Columbia, University of Oklahoma, Xiamen University, and Xiangjiang Laboratory; and audiences at the 2025 Chinese Economist Society Annual Conference, the 2025 China India Insights Conference, the 2025 INFORMS Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society Conference, the 2025 Marketing Science Conference, the 2025 Yale InsightsOn Conference, the 2026 Production and Operations Management Society Annual Conference, the 2026 Symposium on AI in Marketing, and the 2026 Workshop on Empirical Operations Management. S. Zheng and Y. Zhu are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to the papers as first authors. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization. All errors are the authors’.