소비자 평점이 모바일 애플리케이션 구매에 미치는 영향- 한국과 미국 소비자와의 비교를 중심으로 -

The success of smartphone industry is contributed by the growth of the application marketthat enhances the value of the device. We explore the smartphone application market based onthe consumer behavior theory. Especially, we compare two different cultures (Korea vs. US)and investigate the consumer’s attitude toward the Word-of-Mouth (WOM) information. Weexamine the impact of consumer rating on the smartphone application downloads and investigatewhether there is a cultural difference. Existing studies show mixed findings regarding therelationship between consumer rating and product sales. We presume that different consumercharacteristics driven by the culture consumers belong to, moderate the relationship betweenconsumer rating and the applications sales. To investigate our hypotheses, we use monthly application downloads data of top 50 free mobileapplications and their rating information in Korea and the U.S. Our main finding indicates thatthe impact of consumer rating on app download is greater in Korea than in the U.S. Our study contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, unlike previous studieswhich have focused on technological side of the mobile applications, our study attempts toidentify the factors that drive mobile application sales on the consumer side. We also use theactual sales data unlike previous research. Second, we show that consumer rating is a keysuccess factor in mobile applications business and that cultural differences as well influencethe purchase decision. Finally, our study provides managerial implications to practitioners inthe smartphone and the related mobile application industry.