The power of body language: understanding anchor’s body language and the success of live-streaming e-commerce

Purpose Body language is an integral part of interpersonal communication and exchange, which can convey rich emotions, intentions and information. However, how anchor’s body language works in live-streaming e-commerce (LSE) has yet to receive adequate attention. Based on dual systems theory of decision-making, this paper aims to explore the impact of anchor’s body language on the performance of LSE from the perspective of customer engagement behavior and to examine the moderating role of anchor’s relational social interaction. Design/methodology/approach The authors confirmed the theoretical model through empirical analysis of structured data from 1,415 actual livestreaming rooms from Douyin, as well as unstructured data of 418,939 min of video and audio, 1,985,473 words of text and 423,302 keyframe images. Findings The study found that anchor’s body language has a significant positive effect on the performance of LSE, and customer engagement behavior plays a partially mediating role. The moderating effect suggests that anchor’s relational social interaction and body language have substitution effects in enhancing customer engagement behavior and the performance of LSE, which reveals the substitution relationship between anchor’s verbal and nonverbal interactions in LSE. Originality/value This study is one of the earlier literature focusing on anchor’s body language, and the findings provide practical references for enhancing customer engagement behavior and achieving performance growth in LSE.