At the intersection of technology and marketing, the authors develop a framework to unobtrusively detect salespersons’ faces and simultaneously extract six emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust. They analyze 99,451 sales pitches on a livestream retailing platform and match them with actual sales transactions. Results reveal that each emotional display, including happiness, uniformly exhibits a negative U-shaped effect on sales over time. The maximum sales resistance appears in the middle rather than at the beginning or the end of sales pitches. Taken together, in one-to-many screen-mediated communications, salespersons should sell with a straight face. In addition, the authors derive closed-form formulae for the optimal allocation of the presence of a face and emotional displays over the presentation span. In contrast to the U-shaped effects, the optimal face presence wanes at the start, gradually builds to a crescendo, and eventually ebbs. Finally, they show how to objectively rank salespeople and circumvent biases in performance appraisals, thereby making novel contributions to people analytics. This research integrates new types of data and methods, key theoretical insights, and important managerial implications to inform the expanding opportunity that livestreaming presents to marketers to create, communicate, deliver, and capture value.

在技​​术和营销的交叉点上，作者开发了一个框架，可以不引人注意地检测销售人员的面部，同时提取六种情绪：快乐、悲伤、惊讶、愤怒、恐惧和厌恶。他们分析了直播零售平台上的 99,451 个销售宣传，并将其与实际销售交易相匹配。结果表明，随着时间的推移，包括幸福感在内的每一种情绪表现都会对销售额产生负面的 U 形影响。最大的销售阻力出现在中间而不是销售宣传的开始或结束。综上所述，在一对多以屏幕为媒介的沟通中，销售人员应该面无表情地进行销售。此外，作者推导出了封闭形式的公式，用于在演示跨度内优化分配面部和情感显示。与 U 形效果相反，最佳面部存在感在开始时减弱，逐渐增强，最终减弱。最后，他们展示了如何客观地对销售人员进行排名并规避绩效评估中的偏见，从而为人员分析做出新的贡献。这项研究整合了新类型的数据和方法、关键的理论见解和重要的管理意义，以告知直播为营销人员提供的创造、交流、交付和获取价值的不断扩大的机会。