An Exploratory Study on Mobile App Review through Comparative Analysis between South Korea and U.S.

Abstract

Smartphone use is rapidly spreading due to the advantage of being able to connect to the Internet anytime, anywhere--and mobile app development is developing accordingly. The characteristic of the mobile app market is the ability to launch one’s app into foreign markets with ease as long as the platform is the same. However, a large amount of prior research asserts that consumers behave differently depending on their culture and, from this perspective, various studies comparing the differences between consumer behaviors in different countries exist. Accordingly, this research, which uses online product reviews (OPRs) in order to analyze the cultural differences in consumer behavior comparatively by nationality, proposes to compare the U.S. and South Korea by selecting ten apps which were released in both countries in order to perform a sentimental analysis on the basis of star ratings and, based on those ratings, to interpret the sentiments in reviews. This research was carried out to determine whether, on the basis of ratings analysis, analysis of review contents for sentiment differences, analysis of LDA topic modeling, and co-occurrence analysis, actual differences in online reviews in South Korea and the U.S. exist due to cultural differences. The results confirm that the sentiments of reviews for both countries appear to be more negative than those of star ratings. Furthermore, while no great differences in high-raking review topics between the U.S. and South Korea were revealed through topic modeling and co-occurrence analyses, numerous differences in sentiment appeared-confirming that Koreans evaluated the mobile apps’ specialized functions, while Americans evaluated the mobile apps in their entirety. This research reveals that differences in sentiments regarding mobile app reviews due to cultural differences between Koreans and Americans can be seen through sentiment analysis and topic modeling, and, through co-occurrence analysis, that they were able to examine trends in review-writing for each country.