In online channels, products are returned at high rates. Shipping, processing, and refurbishing are so costly that a retailer's profit is extremely sensitive to return rates. In many product categories, such as the $500 billion fashion industry, direct experiments are not feasible because the...

We develop and test an active-machine-learning method to select questions adaptively when consumers use heuristic decision rules. The method tailors priors to each consumer based on a "configurator." Subsequent questions maximize information about the decision heuristics (minimize expected...

Consumers often learn their preferences as they search. For example, after test driving new cars, a consumer might find she undervalued trunk space and overvalued sunroofs. Preference learning makes search complex because, each time a product is searched, updated preferences affect the value of...