Recommendation technologies and consumption diversity: An experimental study on product recommendations, consumer search, and sales diversity

•With recommendations, more diverse products are attended, but less diverse products are selected.•Our understanding of when and why recommendations generate certain effects is incomplete and, in part, incorrect.•We should better understand the interplay between the two faces of recommendations, popularity bias and preference-matching.•Recommendation technologies may cause social costs such as distortion or biases in market demand and limited market competition.