The combinatory role of online ratings and reviews in mobile app downloads: an empirical investigation of gaming and productivity apps from their initial app store launch

Mobile app ratings and reviews are important due to their influence on consumer behavior and the financial consequences for app developers and app platform providers. This paper contributes to prior work by analyzing how rating and review information in combination impact mobile app downloads. To ac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of marketing analytics 2023-09, Vol.11 (3), p.426-442
Main Authors: Sällberg, Henrik, Wang, Shujun, Numminen, Emil
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applications programs
Apps
Business and Management
Consumption
Downloads
Empirical analysis
Hedonic
Market analysis
Mobile computing
Original Article
Productivity
Ratings
Ratings & rankings
Regression analysis
Reviews
Utilitarian
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Summary:Mobile app ratings and reviews are important due to their influence on consumer behavior and the financial consequences for app developers and app platform providers. This paper contributes to prior work by analyzing how rating and review information in combination impact mobile app downloads. To achieve these ends, we utilize daily panel data of 341 gaming (hedonic consumption value-oriented) and productivity (utilitarian consumption value-oriented) apps tracked for almost two years from their release in the Apple App Store. Hence, we contribute to how ratings and reviews matter for the larger majority of apps, whereas previous research has mainly focused on either ratings’ or reviews’ impact on app performance for top-ranked apps. Results of fixed-effects regression analysis reveal different combinatory impacts of text review information (polarity, subjectivity, and review length) and rating information (average rating score, volume of ratings, and dispersion of ratings) on gaming versus productivity app downloads. Important implications of the findings for app developers and platform providers, and for future research into online ratings and reviews, are discussed.
ISSN:2050-3318
2050-3326
2050-3326
DOI:10.1057/s41270-022-00171-w