Determinants of Mobile Application Use: A Study Focused on the Correlation between Application Categories

For a long time, mobile phone had a sole function of communication. Recently however, abrupt innovations in technology allowed extension of the sphere in mobile phone activities. Development of technology enabled realization of almost computer-like environment even on a very small device. Such advancement yielded several forms of new high-tech devices such as smartphone and tablet PC, which quickly proliferated. Simultaneously with the diffusion of the mobile devices, mobile applications for those devices also prospered and soon became deeply penetrated in consumers' daily lives. Numerous mobile applications have been released in app stores yielding trillions of cumulative downloads. However, a big majority of the applications are disregarded from consumers. Even after the applications are purchased, they do not survive long in consumers' mobile devices and are soon abandoned. Nevertheless, it is imperative for both app developers and app-store operators to understand consumer behaviors and to develop marketing strategies aiming to make sustainable business by first increasing sales of mobile applications and by also designing surviving strategy for applications. Therefore, this research analyzes consumers' mobile application usage behavior in a frame of substitution/supplementary of application categories and several explanatory variables. Considering that consumers of mobile devices use multiple apps simultaneously, this research adopts multivariate probit models to explain mobile application usage behavior and to derive correlation between categories of applications for observing substitution/supplementary of application use. The research adopts several explanatory variables including sociodemographic data, user experiences of purchased applications that reflect future purchasing behavior of paid applications as well as consumer attitudes toward marketing efforts, variables representing consumer attitudes toward rating of the app and those representing consumer attitudes toward app-store promotion efforts (i.e., top developer badge and editor's choice badge). Results of this study can be explained in hedonic and utilitarian framework. Consumers who use hedonic applications, such as those of game and entertainment-related, are of young age with low education level. However, consumers who are old and have received higher education level prefer utilitarian application category such as life, information etc. There are disputable arguments over whether the users of SNS are hedonic or utilitarian. In our results, consumers who are younger and those with higher education level prefer using SNS category applications, which is in a middle of utilitarian and hedonic results. Also, applications that are directly related to tangible assets, such as banking, stock and mobile shopping, are only negatively related to experience of purchasing of paid app, meaning that consumers who put weights on tangible assets do not prefer buying paid application. Regarding categories, most correlations among categories are significantly positive. This is because someone who spend more time on mobile devices tends to use more applications. Game and entertainment category shows significant and positive correlation; however, there exists significantly negative correlation between game and information, as well as game and e-commerce categories of applications. Meanwhile, categories of game and SNS as well as game and finance have shown no significant correlations. This result clearly shows that mobile application usage behavior is quite clearly distinguishable - that the purpose of using mobile devices are polarized into utilitarian and hedonic purpose. This research proves several arguments that can only be explained by second-hand real data, not by survey data, and offers behavioral explanations of mobile application usage in consumers' perspectives. This research also shows substitution/supplementary patterns of consumer application usage, which then explain consumers' mobile application usage behaviors. However, this research has limitations in some points. Classification of categories itself is disputable, for classification is diverged among several studies. Therefore, there is a possibility of change in results depending on the classification. Lastly, although the data are collected in an individual application level, we reduce its observation into an individual level. Further research will be done to resolve these limitations.

모바일 앱 사용에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 연구: 앱 카테고리 간 상관관계를 중심으로

스마트폰, 태블릿PC와 같은 모바일 기기의 확산과 더불어 앱의 보급도 크게 늘어나면서 우리 일상의 다양한 분야에서 활용되고 있다. 게임, 생활, 엔터테인먼트, 정보, 전자상거래 등 다양한 종류의 수많은 앱이 생겨나고 있으나, 그들 중 대부분이 사용자의 구매 선택조차 받지 못하고 있으며, 구매가 이루어진 이후에도 많은 수는 오랫동안 사용되지 않고 외면당하고 있다. 사용자가 앱을 선택하고 사용하는 데에 영향을 미치는 요인을 찾는 연구는 사용자에게 적합한 앱을 선별적으로 추천하는 데에 활용됨으로써 마케팅 효과를 높일 수 있다는 점에서 앱 개발자나 배포자 및 사용자 모두에게 기여하는 실무적 가치가 크다고 할 수 있을 것이다. 이런 관점에서, 본 연구는 앱의 사용에 영향을 미치는 요인이 앱 유형별로 어떻게 달라지는지를 파악하려는 목적에서 수행되었다. 앱 사용에 영향을 미치는 요인으로서 사용자의 인구통계학적 특성뿐만 아니라 사용자가 앱을 구매하고 사용한 경험, 구매 시 참고한 앱에 대한 객관적 평가인 별점, 마케팅의 수단으로서 상품의 소개 화면에 노출되는 배지(Badge)의 영향을 살펴보았다. 사용자의 앱 선택에 영향을 미치는 요인에 대한 기존 연구들은 대부분 설문에 대한 응답 결과를 분석에 사용함으로써 사용기록이 정확히 반영하지 못하는 한계점을 갖는 반면, 본 연구는 특정한 기간 동안 사용자의 실제 사용기록 전체를 측정하고 수집하여, 이 데이터를 기반으로 분석을 실시했다는 점에서 큰 의의를 갖는다고 할 수 있다. 사용자가 자신의 모바일 기기에 설치된 다양한 앱을 설치해놓고 이들 중 자신의 필요에 적합한 것을 선택하여 사용하게 되는데, 이 선택에 영향을 미치는 요인이 카테고리 별로 다를 것이라는 점을 고려하여, 다변량 프로빗 모형을 활용하여 분석을 실시하였다. 분석결과로 앱 사용에 영향을 미치는 요인이 앱 카테고리 별로 달라지는 것과 앱 카테고리 선택 간의 상관관계를 제시하였으며, 사용자의 앱사용 목적에 따라 쾌락성(Hedonic)과 실용성(Utilitarian)으로 구분지어 설명하였다.