Paper Info
Title
Motivating Effective Mobile App Adoptions: Evidence From A Large-Scale Randomized Field Experiment
Abstract
Prior literature has established a positive association between mobile app adoptions and customers' purchase behaviors. However, it is not clear whether and how firms can actively influence customers' mobile app adoptions and increase their purchases through these induced adoptions. Using a randomized field experiment involving over 230,000 customers, we investigate the differential impacts of offering incentives or information on customers' mobile app adoptions and subsequent purchase behaviors. We find that (1) providing monetary incentives and providing information can both lead to a significant increase in mobile app adoptions and that (2) the causal effect of induced mobile app adoptions varies greatly depending on how customers are motivated. Although providing monetary incentives leads to a larger increase in mobile app adoptions, such incentive-induced adoptions do not result in more purchases in the long run. In contrast, providing information leads to effective mobile adoptions that sustainably increase customers' purchases and overall profits for the firm. In further examining customers' multichannel purchase behaviors, we find that there is a complementary effect between the mobile app and the desktop channel for information-induced app adopters but a substitution effect between the mobile app and the mobile web channel for incentive-induced app adopters. For information-induced app adopters, the mobile app serves as a discovery tool and helps them find a greater variety of deals. Finally, in exploring the underlying drivers of such differences in the effect of induced adoptions, we find that information compared with incentives serves as a better sorting device and can attract customers who have a greater need for the app and use it more effectively. Our findings provide actionable insights to firms on designing interventions to motivate effective mobile adoptions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1287/isre.2018.0815
INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
Keywords
Field
DocType
mobile app, induced adoption, field experiment, local average treatment effect, multichannel, online-to-offline
Mobile app,Advertising,Sorting,Mobile device,Marketing,Business
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
30
2
1047-7047
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tianshu Sun110.69
Lanfei Shi2211.54
Siva Viswanathan332729.10
Elena Zheleva463837.55