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Identifying significant textual features in titles of Google play store applications and their influence on user review rating

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Abstract

User review rating of mobile applications is a crucial factor related to downloads and it greatly impacts the customer’s decisions to prefer the applications with the highest (most positive) ratings. Whereas, titles are among the first information displayed to users when they search for any particular application and a compelling title can be a leading cause for an application’s success. Hence, developer companies fashion (optimize) their application titles strategically, in such a way, that they are highly eye-catching and descriptive about application functionalities in an attempt to lure users to download and positively rate their applications. However, traditional literature may lack the scientific approaches which investigate what (specific) kind of textual features in application titles actually have a positive (or negative) effect on the review rating. Therefore, aim of this research work is to perform two separate kinds of scientific analyses to determine the impacts of unconscious (aspects usually not observed by users) and conscious (keyterms which are observed by users) features of Google-play store application titles on the user review rating. At first, for the investigation of unconscious aspects various machine learning algorithms are employed and secondly, for the conscious features another keyterms analysis is carried out. Overall, according to the results, certain unconscious aspects can lead towards the elevated review ratings in both cases of Applications and Games. Albeit, conscious aspects tend to have a positive impact only on the review ratings of Games.

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Notes

  1. https://www.kaggle.com/gauthamp10/google-playstore-apps.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan

    Ahmad Bilal & Hamid Turab Mirza

  2. Department of Software Engineering, The University of Lahore, Lahore, 54000, Pakistan

    Ibrar Hussain

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  1. Ahmad Bilal
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  2. Hamid Turab Mirza
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  3. Ibrar Hussain
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Correspondence to Hamid Turab Mirza.

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Bilal, A., Mirza, H.T. & Hussain, I. Identifying significant textual features in titles of Google play store applications and their influence on user review rating. Knowl Inf Syst 65, 1159–1178 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-022-01799-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-022-01799-x

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