Motivating Effective Mobile App Adoptions: Evidence from a Large-Scale Randomized Field Experiment

The adoption and usage of mobile devices have fundamentally altered users’ experience in a multichannel world. With the rise of mobile channels, firms have designed thousands of campaigns and spent billions of dollars to motivate or even subsidize app adoptions. However, it is not clear whether and how firms can effectively increase customers’ purchases through these induced adoptions. Using a randomized field experiment involving over 230,000 customers on a major daily deal platform, we investigate the differential impacts of offering incentives or information on customers’ app adoptions and subsequent purchase behaviors. We find that the causal effect of induced app adoptions varies greatly depending on how customers are motivated. Although providing incentive encourages most adoptions, incentive-induced adoptions do not result in more purchases in the long run. In contrast, providing information leads to effective mobile adoptions that sustainably increase customers’ purchases and overall profits for the firm. We further identify a complementary effect between mobile app and desktop channels for information-induced app adopters, because the app serves as a deal discovery tool for them. Finally, we find that information works as a sorting device and attracts customers who have a greater need for the app and use it more effectively.