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Why do App Reviews get Responded: A Preliminary Study of the Relationship between Reviews and Responses in Mobile Apps

Published: 18 April 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Recent studies show that providing responses for user reviews of a mobile app can increase its user satisfaction and overall ratings. However, due to large volumes of user reviews, few are actually responded by app developers. In this paper, we conduct a preliminary study on the characteristics of mobile apps' reviews and their human-written responses. We found that an app review often has multiple segments, each has a particular intention. Similarly, a response also has multiple segments, and some are intended to answer the impact parts of reviews (e.g., complaints, requests, or information seeking). Responses often have similar structures and most of their content is consistently written with pre-defined templates. We also found that similar reviews might be answered with the same or similar responses. Based on those findings, we propose to develop a semi-automated tool to help mobile apps' developers write the responses for users reviews more effectively.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Unveiling User Perspectives: Exploring Themes in Femtech Mobile App Reviews for Enhanced Usability and PrivacyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765308:MHCI(1-21)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
  • (2023)Evaluating Developer Responses to App Reviews: The Case of Mobile Banking Apps in Saudi Arabia and the United StatesSustainability10.3390/su1508670115:8(6701)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Analysing app reviews for software engineering: a systematic literature reviewEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-021-10065-727:2Online publication date: 20-Jan-2022
  • Show More Cited By

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  1. Why do App Reviews get Responded: A Preliminary Study of the Relationship between Reviews and Responses in Mobile Apps

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        ACMSE '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Southeast Conference
        April 2019
        295 pages
        ISBN:9781450362511
        DOI:10.1145/3299815
        • Conference Chair:
        • Dan Lo,
        • Program Chair:
        • Donghyun Kim,
        • Publications Chair:
        • Eric Gamess
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 18 April 2019

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        Author Tags

        1. Empirical
        2. Mobile App
        3. Response
        4. Review

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        • Short-paper
        • Research
        • Refereed limited

        Conference

        ACM SE '19
        Sponsor:
        ACM SE '19: 2019 ACM Southeast Conference
        April 18 - 20, 2019
        GA, Kennesaw, USA

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        Overall Acceptance Rate 502 of 1,023 submissions, 49%

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        Cited By

        View all
        • (2024)Unveiling User Perspectives: Exploring Themes in Femtech Mobile App Reviews for Enhanced Usability and PrivacyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765308:MHCI(1-21)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
        • (2023)Evaluating Developer Responses to App Reviews: The Case of Mobile Banking Apps in Saudi Arabia and the United StatesSustainability10.3390/su1508670115:8(6701)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2023
        • (2022)Analysing app reviews for software engineering: a systematic literature reviewEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-021-10065-727:2Online publication date: 20-Jan-2022
        • (2021)Bridging from Crisis to Everyday Life – An Analysis of User Reviews of the Warning App NINA and the COVID-19 Regulation Apps CoroBuddy and DarfIchDasCompanion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3462204.3481745(72-78)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2021

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