Abstract:

Nowadays, in the era of mobile Internet, various apps emerge endlessly, but the market competition of apps is becoming increasingly fierce. Only apps that are popular with users can survive. It is necessary for app developers to improve the user scale and retention of their products by sorting out which factors will affect the popularity of apps. Most of the previous studies are based on the unilateral perspective of users, which ignore the user behavior of deleting reviews. This paper, by combining the perspective of users and developers, and considering the deleted reviews and the mechanism behind them, systematically explores the influencing factors of app popularity. The results of the econometric models based on the data of 2 528 apps in Apple App Store show that there is an inverted “U”-shaped relationship between deleted reviews and app downloads. Whether there is a payment item has a negative impact on app downloads, while the number of reviews, user ratings, online duration, and package size also have a positive impact on app downloads. Based on the in-depth study of “deleted comments” and related factors, this paper proposes some strategies and suggestions for app developers and marketers to expand their app market, such as focusing on long-term user experience and enriching app functions with marketing strategies.

Key words:

mobile app, popularity, deleted reviews, econometric modeling, text mining

摘要：

当今移动互联网时代，各种类型的APP不断涌现，使得APP的市场竞争日益激烈，只有受用户欢迎的APP才能获得流量而存活下来，厘清哪些因素会影响APP的受欢迎程度对于APP开发者提升产品的用户规模以及用户留存具有重要价值。以往相关研究大多基于用户单侧视角而忽略了用户删除评论这个行为，本研究将用户视角与开发者视角相结合，考虑了被删除评论及其背后的机制，系统性地探究了APP受欢迎程度的影响因素。基于苹果应用商城中2 528个APP数据的计量模型分析结果可以发现，被删除评论与APP下载量之间存在倒“U”型关系，是否有支付项对APP下载量产生负面影响，而评论数量、用户评分、上线时长以及安装包大小均对APP下载量有积极影响。基于对“被删除评论”等因素的探究，为APP开发者和营销人员提出注重用户的长期体验、结合营销策略以丰富APP功能等APP市场拓展策略和建议。

关键词:

移动APP, 受欢迎程度, 被删除评论, 计量模型分析, 文本挖掘