Customer behavior and adoption · Empirical observational study using transactional customer data; adoption and subsequent purchasing are compared with controls for customer heterogeneity and prior behavior.
App Adoption: The Effect on Purchasing of Customers Who Have Used a Mobile Website Previously
Huan Liu, Lara Lobschat, Peter C. Verhoef, Hong Zhao (2019). App Adoption: The Effect on Purchasing of Customers Who Have Used a Mobile Website Previously. Journal of Interactive Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2018.12.001
Plain-English take
App adopters have higher purchase incidence, purchase more frequently, and spend more per order than non-adopters. The app effect on order size is stronger for customers with a lower share of high-price-category spending and for less-loyal customers, consistent with reduced perceived financial risk and potentially improved loyalty.
How much weight to give this
2/5 Evidence needs cautious interpretation
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Empirical observational study using transactional customer data; adoption and subsequent purchasing are compared with controls for customer heterogeneity and prior behavior.
Customers of a Chinese online retailer who had an existing mobile website and were exposed to a newly added retail app; the study uses retailer transaction histories.
Check comparison conditions and analysis in the paper.
Publisher record checked; full-text methods were not verified.
Double-blind? Blinding details were not established from the checked publisher page.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What does app adoption: the effect on purchasing of customers who have used a mobile website previously show about customer behavior or marketing outcomes?
Design
Empirical observational study using transactional customer data; adoption and subsequent purchasing are compared with controls for customer heterogeneity and prior behavior.
Sample and setting
Customers of a Chinese online retailer who had an existing mobile website and were exposed to a newly added retail app; the study uses retailer transaction histories.
Reported result
What the study found
App adopters have higher purchase incidence, purchase more frequently, and spend more per order than non-adopters. The app effect on order size is stronger for customers with a lower share of high-price-category spending and for less-loyal customers, consistent with reduced perceived financial risk and potentially improved loyalty.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The evidence comes from one Chinese online retailer and nonrandom app adoption, so selection and context limit causal and geographic generalizability; the study also examines a retail app/mobile-web channel rather than SaaS product-led adoption. Full-text methods and correction history were not independently checked.
Possible founder application
Use this paper as evidence about app adoption: the effect on purchasing of customers who have used a mobile website previously in the stated context; compare its population, treatment and outcome with your own decision.
Evidence access
Publisher page; full-text availability varies and was not established.
Candidate study metadata and reported evidence were cross-checked against a direct publisher-page retrieval; the full article was not independently reviewed.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.