In-App Couponing or Group-Couponing: The Impact of Mobile Marketing Strategies on Branded App Adoption (CEIBS Working Paper, No. 014/2020/MKT)

While mobile marketers have devoted increased marketing efforts to promote their apps, little is known about the effectiveness of mobile marketing strategies on consumers’ adoption of branded apps. This study investigates whether two mobile in-app marketing strategies in-app couponing and in-app group-couponingimpact consumer adoption and how social influences from both existing adopters and people in a physical environment strengthen or weaken the effectiveness of these two strategies. Based on a proprietary data collected from a large Chinese shopping mall, this study analyzed both daily aggregate adoption data across eight months and daily individual adoption data of 1,908,082 consumers. Surprisingly, our results showed that while both in-app couponing and group-couponing are two various couponing strategies, their impacts on consumers’ adoption of branded apps are opposite. Specifically, we found that while the likelihood of consumer adoption was positively associated with the frequent use of in-app group-coupons, it was negatively associated with the frequent use of in-app coupons. Interestingly, this study also revealed opposite moderating effects of social interactions from existing adopters and from people in a physical environment. These findings imply that the impacts of two in-app marketing strategies are not constant but dynamic with the increase in the number of adopters and the crowdedness of a physical environment.