Generative AI and Sales Productivity: Field Experiments in Online Retail

Abstract

We quantify the short-term impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on sales performance through a series of large-scale randomized field experiments involving millions of users and products at a leading cross-border online retail platform. Over 2023-2024, the platform integrated GenAI into seven consumer-facing business workflows spanning customer service, consumer-product matching, advertising, and seller services. We find that GenAI adoption increases sales in most workflows, with effects ranging from no detectable impact to $16.3\%$, depending on GenAI's marginal contribution relative to baseline firm practices. Across the four GenAI applications with positive sales effects, the implied annual incremental value is roughly $\$5-$an economically meaningful impact given the retailer's scale and the early stage of GenAI adoption. The gains operate primarily through higher conversion rates rather than larger cart values, consistent with GenAI improving the shopping experience by reducing search, information, communication, and personalization frictions. Importantly, these effects are not associated with worse post-purchase outcomes, as product return rates and customer ratings do not deteriorate. Finally, we document substantial demand-side heterogeneity, with larger gains for less experienced consumers. Our findings provide novel, large-scale causal evidence on how GenAI shapes sales productivity in online retail, highlighting both its immediate value and broader potential.