Dual Learning: How and How Much Can Platforms Learn from Searching Consumers?

Maarten Janssen and Eeva Mauring

No 20381, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Consumers search on a platform to find a product they like. The platform observes which products consumers inspect and buy. Based on these observations it ranks products to maximally learn, in the long term, which product consumers like. We find that a monopoly platform first experiments with rankings and later only ranks products that early consumers bought. This guarantees that later consumers are pickier, helping the platform to learn what consumers really like. The more dissimilar consumer tastes, the more consumers search themselves and the platform learns about products. Competition restricts what platforms learn.

Keywords: Learning; Consumer search; product rankings; Steering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 D83 L10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
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