Revealing Topics in Health & Fitness Mobile App Category User Reviews: A Topic Modeling Approach

Abstract

Mobile devices and platforms, as an essential part of today’s marketing, lead to significant opportunities for marketing decision-makers. Understanding the consumer through online reviews regarding social interactions, e-commerce, and daily activities becomes fundamental in digital marketing. The mobile app market consists of several categories with different characteristics, which require examination in different contexts. The study focuses on health & fitness category in the context of Türkiye market and mobile apps. The research aims to evaluate health & fitness mobile application market through Google Play Store user reviews and research questions are related to discovering topics and sub-topics in the user reviews. Consistent to research aims, the study adopts a topic modeling approach utilizing BERTopic model on 17.921 online reviews for 20 mobile apps. The study concludes 80 individual topics grouped into 10 topic groups namely: activities & fitness, advertisement overload & presence, dissatisfaction, experience sharing, features, feedback & question, functionality, privacy, recommended & not recommended, satisfaction. Theoretical contributions through four theories and practical implications of the study can shed light on future researches and industrial applications. Key Words: Health, Fitness, Mobile Application, User Reviews, Word Of Mouth JEL Classification: M31