The Sandbox Economy: When LLMs Stop Talking and Start Shopping
Discount. It is a small word, but in retail it is not decorative. It changes what people buy, how much they buy, whether they switch brands, whether they stockpile, whether distributors clear inventory, and whether a manager later pretends the promotion was “strategic” rather than simply expensive. This is where many LLM-agent demos become fragile. They can describe a discount. They can explain why a rational consumer might respond to it. They can even role-play a price-sensitive shopper with theatrical enthusiasm. But describing incentive response is not the same as simulating it. A consumer simulator that treats price as one more piece of text is not an economic simulator. It is a chatbot wearing a shopping cart. ...