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Unveiling Competition Dynamics in Mobile App Markets Through User Reviews

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Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14588))

Abstract

[Context and motivation] User reviews published in mobile app repositories are essential for understanding user satisfaction and engagement within a specific market segment. [Question/problem] Manual analysis of reviews is impractical due to the large data volume, and automated analysis faces challenges like data synthesis and reporting. This complicates the task for app providers in identifying patterns and significant events, especially in assessing the influence of competitor apps. Furthermore, review-based research is mostly limited to a single app or a single app provider, excluding potential competition analysis. Consequently, there is an open research challenge in leveraging user reviews to support cross-app analysis within a specific market segment. [Principal ideas/results] Following a case-study research method in the microblogging app market, we introduce an automatic, novel approach to support mobile app market analysis. Our approach leverages quantitative metrics and event detection techniques based on newly published user reviews. Significant events are proactively identified and summarized by comparing metric deviations with historical baseline indicators within the lifecycle of a mobile app. [Contribution] Results from our case study show empirical evidence of the detection of relevant events within the selected market segment, including software- or release-based events, contextual events and the emergence of new competitors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Full datasets and complete evaluation results are available in the replication package:

    replication package https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10125307. Source code is also available at:

    code repository https://github.com/quim-motger/app-market-analysis.

  2. 2.

    https://joinmastodon.org/about.

  3. 3.

    Available at: https://github.com/AgustiGM/sa_filter_tool.

  4. 4.

    Prompt template available in replication package.

  5. 5.

    From https://alternativeto.net/software/twitter/?platform=android.

  6. 6.

    Complete summaries for all potentially correlated events are available in the replication package.

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Acknowledgment

With the support from the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia and the European Social Fund. This paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under project/funding scheme PID2020-117191RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Quim Motger, Xavier Franch & Jordi Marco

  2. Universitá di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Vincenzo Gervasi

Authors
  1. Quim Motger
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  2. Xavier Franch
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  3. Vincenzo Gervasi
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  4. Jordi Marco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Quim Motger .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Daniel Mendez

  2. NOVA University Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana Moreira

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Motger, Q., Franch, X., Gervasi, V., Marco, J. (2024). Unveiling Competition Dynamics in Mobile App Markets Through User Reviews. In: Mendez, D., Moreira, A. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14588. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57327-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57327-9_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-57326-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-57327-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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