Ugly faces and attractive faces generate more sales
Ugly Faces Increase Sales
Product Images

Ugly Faces Increase Sales

Customers believe that unattractive people are more competent.

Most people are familiar with the beauty bias.

Beautiful people seem credible, honest, and trustworthy. Something "feels good" about them, and we attribute this impression to their personality.

So, what about ugly faces — wouldn't they seem inferior? Actually, no.

Across 10k+ Airbnb listings, hosts sold more occupancies when their photo was (a) visible, (b) high-quality, and (c) smiling. But most interesting, sales increased for beautiful and ugly faces (Peng, Cui, Chung, & Zheng, 2020).

Similar effects happened in 5miles, a peer-to-peer marketplace.

U-shaped relationship with sales and beauty. Ugly faces sell more units, then it dips before rising again with beautiful faces

In both platforms, average-looking people sold the least.

But it depends on the product. Beautiful sellers were most effective for visual products (e.g., bags), while ugly sellers were most effective for technical products (e.g., electronics).

What's causing these effects? My guesses:

  • Stereotypes. Beauty and intelligence seem mutually exclusive (e.g., dumb blonde). If beauty is low, we allocate these credits to a "competence" category. Ugliness premiums might disappear when they're self-inflicted (e.g., sloppiness) because they would no longer boost competence.
  • Symbolic Confusion. Want beautiful products? You prefer beautiful sellers because you confuse this facial beauty for the product. Same with ugly sellers. Need a complex service? Your brain will be seeking a complex and disfluent stimulus. In one study, customers who evaluated a complex service preferred a font that was difficult to read because of this matching complexity (Thompson & Ince, 2013). If you need a complex service, an ugly face matches this trait.

  • Peng, L., Cui, G., Chung, Y., & Zheng, W. (2020). The faces of success: Beauty and ugliness premiums in e-commerce platforms. Journal of Marketing, 84(4), 67-85.
  • Thompson, D. V., & Ince, E. C. (2013). When disfluency signals competence: The effect of processing difficulty on perceptions of service agents. Journal of Marketing Research, 50(2), 228-240.

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