Essays on Mobile Application Performance in the Market

Sammanfattning: The mobile application has experienced rapid growth since its emergence in 2008. The mobile app platform, as the two-sided market for mobile apps, enables app developers and app users to make transactions in it. In this competitive market, app developers face different factors that influence the success of apps. This dissertation deals with mobile app performance in the market and studies the determinants of mobile app performance from app users’ and app developers’ perspectives. This dissertation consists of four essays and an introductory part. Each essay is a separate study, but all of them aim to explore the factors that impact mobile app performance in the market. Essay I investigates the combinatory effects of ratings and reviews from app users on new mobile app downloads. Ratings and reviews have been found to have direct and interaction effects on mobile app downloads. Essay II analyzes the effects of different revenue model choices from app developers on app revenue performance in the market. The findings show that free downloads combined with in-app payments are a superior revenue model for gaming apps, but either charging for downloading or in-app purchases is better for productivity apps. Essay III discovers the diffusion pattern of new mobile apps in the market. The Bass model is used to test the diffusion parameters, and the logistic model and the Gompertz model are used to do the robustness check. The results show that the Bass model is the best-fitting model for mobile app data compared with the other two models, and newly launched mobile apps follow the S-curve diffusion pattern, and the early expansion of the mobile app should achieve in the first 35 weeks. Essay IV studies how the launch timing of new apps affects app downloads. The backward launch competition, cross-category launch competition, and release-date launch competition are factors that impact app downloads. For all four essays, the US Apple App Store data is adopted because the Apple App Store is one of the leading app stores worldwide. Different empirical analysis methods are applied in the four essays. Hedonic and utilitarian consumption values are considered in differentiating app types in all four essays.