The Role of Application Rank in the Extended Mobile Application Download

The growing popularity of mobile application has led to researchers and practitioners needing to understand users' mobile application download behaviors. Using large-scale transaction data obtained from a leading Korean telecommunications company, we empirically explore how application download rank, which appears to users when they decide to download a new application, affects their extended mobile application download. This terminology refers to downloading an additional application in the same category as those that they have already downloaded. We also consider IT characteristics, user characteristics, and application type that might be associated with the extended application download. The analysis generates the following result. Overall, a higher rank of a new application encourages the extended application download, but the linear relationship between the rank and the extended application download disappears when critical rank points are incorporated into the model. Further, no quadratic effect of rank is found in the extended application download. Based on the results, we suggest theoretical and managerial implications.