What in Consumer Reviews Affects the Sales of Mobile Apps: A Multifacet Sentiment Analysis Approach
研究分析了消费者评论中关于产品质量和服务质量的不同话题对移动应用销量的影响，发现服务质量评论对销量排名的单位效应更强。
With the rapid adoption of smartphones, developing mobile apps has become an attractive arena for entrepreneurs. Many factors drive the sales of mobile apps, one of which is online word of mouth (eWOM). This research examines the effect of textual consumer reviews on the sales of mobile apps. Noting the inconsistent findings on the effect of textual reviews in previous literature, this study inspects how the sentiments of different topics in online reviews affect app sales. We develop a multifacet sentiment analysis (MFSA) approach to measure the dimensions in consumer reviews. Specifically, we are interested in the comments on product quality and service quality in this research. Employing a real-world data set of seventy-nine paid and seventy free apps from an iOS app store, we found that although consumers’ opinions on product quality occupies a larger portion of consumer reviews, their comments on service quality have a stronger unit effect on sales rankings. The empirical analysis illustrates the value of our proposed MFSA approach for better understanding of the effect of textual consumer reviews on mobile app success.