Ugly and beautiful – both can get good results on eCommerce platforms

An attractive face is conducive to attracting attention and having even more online selling across social media, but an ugly face is still not bad – at least it is better than a plain-looking seller, particularly in expertise-relevant products, according to a Lingnan University study.

Led by three scholars, the department of marketing and international business at Lingnan University has researched on a seller’s appearance in online selling.

It has shown that facial attractiveness was a key factor contributing to the success of product selling via social media, with first impressions given from profile pictures of sellers on C2C eCommerce platforms helping build trust between strangers during online transactions.

Unsurprisingly, an image showing how attractive the seller is can make a real difference.

The research team extracted geometric features of facial images and adopted a machine learning approach to score large samples of online seller portraits. Subsequently, the team rated profile pictures of over 10,000 hosts from more than 17,000 listings on Airbnb before comparing their annual occupancy rates.

Attractive faces enjoyed a beauty premium effect in the research. Hosts with attractive faces had a 6% higher annual occupancy rate than those with plain-looking faces (62% versus 56%), while hosts with perfect faces had an occupancy rate as much as 22% over those with plain-looking faces (78% versus 56%).

To study the impact of ugliness, the research team also separated plain-looking and unattractive faces. The results showed that unattractive Airbnb hosts enjoyed a 4% higher annual occupancy rate on average compared to plain-looking hosts (60% versus 56%), and the most unattractive hosts had as much as a 16% higher occupancy rate (72% versus 56%).

However, the beauty and ugliness premiums were gender-related. Attractive female sellers did not have an advantage over their less attractive counterparts in appealing to male buyers, but female buyers tended to consider unattractive men as more competent than average-looking men. The research has suggested it might be related to the stereotype of the tech-savvy nerd.

Buyers may have some perceptions over the sellers’ appearance too. Attractive sellers were considered more sociable and competent than their plain-looking counterparts, especially when selling items relevant to appearance such as cosmetics and skin care products, whereas unattractive sellers were thought of as more competent, especially when pitching technical products that require expertise, such as electronic products.

“Our analyses of tens of thousands of seller profile pictures provide converging evidence of a U-shaped relationship between facial attractiveness and sales,” said professor Cui Geng said.

“On eCommerce platforms, both attractive and unattractive sellers can improve their performance by enhancing their perceived sociability or competence, especially when they are matched with products associated with the particular strengths derived from appearances.

“Taking a photo from a particular angle may enhance attractiveness and avoid the plainness penalty. For eCommerce platform operators, they may provide guidance, suggestions, and encouragement to sellers to post attractive portraits of themselves (on these platforms).”

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