The Implications of Offering Free Versions for the Performance of Paid Mobile Apps
The Implications of Offering Free Versions for the Performance of Paid Mobile Apps
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DOI：
10.1509/jm.15.0205
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发表时间：
2017-11-01
影响因子：
12.9
通讯作者：
Mahajan, Vijay
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Arora, Sandeep;ter Hofstede, Frenkel;Mahajan, Vijay
移动应用程序(APP)行业在过去十年中取得了巨大的增长，主要是由小型应用程序开发公司推动的。由于缺乏广告预算，这些相对默默无闻的小企业经常提供免费版本的付费应用程序，以便在拥挤的应用程序行业引起注意，并减少客户对应用程序质量和适合度的不确定性。作者在现有的市场营销和信息系统文献的基础上，对抽样和版本控制进行了研究，以调查提供免费版本对付费应用程序采用速度的影响。利用12315个付费应用程序的770万个观察数据，并考虑到内生性，作者发现，尽管提供免费版本的付费应用程序的做法很受欢迎，但它与付费应用程序的采用速度呈负相关。他们还发现，无论是对于享乐主义应用程序，还是在付费应用程序的后期阶段，免费版本存在与付费应用程序采用速度之间的这种负关联都更强。作者希望，这项研究的结果将鼓励应用程序开发商重新评估他们目前提供免费版本付费应用程序的战略，并促使学者们撰写更多专注于这一行业的工作。
The mobile application (app) industry has grown tremendously over the past ten years, primarily fueled by small app development businesses. Lacking advertising budgets, these small and relatively unknown businesses often offer free versions of their paid apps to be noticed in the crowded app industry and to reduce customer uncertainty about app quality and fit. The authors build on the existing marketing and information systems literature on sampling and versioning to investigate the implications of offering free versions for the adoption speed of paid apps. Using a unique data set of 7.7 million observations from 12,315 paid apps, and accounting for endogeneity, the authors find that although the practice of offering free versions of paid apps is popular, it is negatively associated with paid app adoption speed. They also find that this negative association between free version presence and paid app adoption speed is stronger both for hedonic apps and in the later life stages of paid apps. The authors hope that the study's results will encourage app developers to reevaluate their current strategy of offering free versions of paid apps and prompt academics to produce more work focusing on this industry.