Understanding Mobile Apps Purchase: The Effect of Free Trial and Online Consumer Review

Abstract

Online consumer reviews have been shown to have positive relationship with purchases in non-mobile e-commerce. Although being considered as a new and promising way of conducting e-commerce, mobile commerce is yet to realize the likely benefits of (positive) online consumer reviews, especially in the recently highly-publicized mobile applications (apps). To understand what brings about mobile apps downloads and purchases, this study chooses the game category and collects data of 400 apps from Google Play to conduct the study. The analysis result shows that the volume of online consumer reviews is positively related to free apps downloads as well as apps purchases. However, the effect of the valence of online consumer reviews is not confirmed. This is in contrast to what concluded for non-mobile e-commerce. Further, not surprisingly, the price of apps has a negative effect on apps purchases. The unconfirmed effect of valence mandates a scrutiny. This is done by distinguishing free apps as popular or less popular, and paid apps as higher-price or lower-price. Analyses following this division of samples confirmed the effect of valence on less popular free apps and higher price paid apps. Finally, when the effect of the volume of online consumer reviews is considered, the number of free trial downloads is incapable of explaining the number of apps purchased. The explanatory power of free downloads is present only when the volume of online consumer reviews is not taken into account. This implies that the relationship is fully mediated by the volume of online consumer reviews.