Acquisition and retention · Large-scale randomized field experiment
Motivating Effective Mobile App Adoptions: Evidence from a Large-Scale Randomized Field Experiment
Sun, T., Shi, L., Viswanathan, S., & Zheleva, E. (2019). Information Systems Research, 30(2), 523–539.
Plain-English take
Both incentives and information increased adoption, but only information-induced adoption sustainably raised purchases and firm profit. For your marketing: This distinguishes adoption volume from valuable adoption.
How much weight to give this
4.5/5 Strong design for its specific question
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.
Random assignment provides a strong comparison for effects in the tested setting.
Large sample reported (230,000); size alone does not guarantee a representative sample.
Randomized comparison; confirm the control condition and analysis in the paper.
This profile could be checked against an abstract or metadata, not the full paper.
Double-blind? Blinding is not reported in the source reviewed; that does not establish whether blinding was or was not used.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Do incentives or information more effectively encourage app adoption that leads to lasting customer purchases?
Design
Randomized field experiment comparing monetary incentives with informational messages to motivate app adoption.
Sample and setting
More than 230,000 customers in the study's mobile-app adoption setting.
Reported result
What the study found
Both incentives and information increased adoption, but only information-induced adoption sustainably raised purchases and firm profit. Incentives produced a larger short-run adoption increase without long-run purchase gains.
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 study concerns an app and firm-specific customer base; the publisher abstract does not report further sample or category details. Adoption and channel behavior may differ for a SaaS product.
Possible founder application
Distinguishes adoption volume from valuable adoption. When using onboarding incentives or app prompts, compare long-run usage and profit by motivation rather than counting installs alone.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract; full text may require access
INFORMS publisher abstract retrieved with Firecrawl; sample size and comparative findings were checked on the page.
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.