The effect of app store strategy on app rating: The moderating role of hedonic and utilitarian mobile apps

Concerns about the performance of mobile apps have spurred a stream of research on factors contributing to the success of mobile apps in the major app stores. However, identified success factors have not been synthesized into a unified framework. Similarly, reported findings typically address main effects. The present study introduces the concept of app store strategy to synthesize the mobile app success factors that developers implement in the major app stores. The study synthesizes four such factors consisting of app size, app versions (major and minor), revenue model and mobile app names. Further, drawing on IS literature, the study distinguishes between hedonic and utilitarian mobile apps. Using a dataset of mobile apps from Play Store (N = 8325), the study investigates to what extent app store strategy interacts with the hedonic and utilitarian value of mobile apps in driving app rating. The study employed a combination of traditional regression and machine learning approaches to test proposed hypotheses. The findings make a two-fold contribution to the literature first by introducing the concept of app store strategy to synthesize mobile app success factors and second by examining hedonic and utilitarian mobile apps as a boundary condition in the relationship between app store strategy and app rating.