The effects of application discoverability on user benefits in mobile application stores

Abstract

This document is in the required format. Mobile applications and mobile application stores are becoming people's commodities in everyday life, offering unprecedented mobile services. In mobile application stores with numerous applications finding the right applications is painstaking for users. Therefore, this study aims to explicate the effect of application discoverability on user benefits in mobile application stores by identifying the relationships of need specificity, application discoverability, and application quantity. Using a survey methodology, we found that app users' need specificity has an impact on application discoverability and quantity-sufficiency of applications, but not quantity-overload of applications. Our findings also show that application discoverability plays a substantial role in enriching users' utilitarian and hedonic benefits in mobile application stores. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.