What does the 5-point/star mobile app rating tell us about user loyalty?

Mob4Hire, to expand the concept of user loyalty beyond the 5-star rating system, incorporated the RAPID loyalty approach into their mobile app usability testing solution, MobExperience. The RAPID approach holds that there are three types of customer loyalty which drive different types of business growth. Using this approach, these loyalty components (and questions) were modified for mobile applications:

MobExperience Measures User Loyalty

MobExperience, Mob4Hire’s mobile usability testing solution, helps companies asses and improve their customers’ mobile user experience. Mob4Hire employ their proprietary sample of mobile savvy testers (Mobsters) to give companies real feedback about their mobile app / Web site. The mobsters download, install, use and evaluate the mobile app / Web site, providing ratings on 5-point star rating (called MobStar rating here), retention, advocacy and expansion loyalty, along with seven mobile user experience areas (today’s blog post focuses on the loyalty measures).

Combining data from six (6) MobExperience projects (N = 151), I correlated the MobStar rating (If was available for download in an app store, how would you rate it? - 1 Star to 5 Stars) with each of the user loyalty questions. The correlations of the MobStar rating with each of the above user loyalty questions are:

• Continue using: r = .59
• Use similar app of competition: r = -.04
• Recommend: r = .67
• Overall satisfaction: r = .70
• Use additional apps: r = .55
• Increase usage: r = .46

When User Loyalty is Important, 5-Star Ratings are not Enough

There are a few key conclusions we can make about the pattern of correlations. These are:

1. Star ratings of mobile apps reflect different components of user loyalty. The 5-point/star rating scale are predictive of different types of user loyalty behavior intentions. Users who give higher overall star ratings of the mobile application also report higher levels of user loyalty toward the mobile application.
2. Star ratings for mobile apps primarily reflect advocacy loyalty. While MobStar rating was correlated across different types of loyalty questions, the MobStar rating was correlated more highly with the overall satisfaction and recommend questions than other loyalty measures (expansion, retention).
3. Different measures of overall mobile application quality are needed to assess different types of user loyalty. While many of the user loyalty questions are correlated with the MobStar rating, they still provide unique information about users’ loyalty toward the app. Over 50% of the variability in loyalty ratings are not explained by the Mobstar ratings. The star rating system of mobile apps appears to be insufficient in measuring user loyalty toward the mobile application.

Similar to the improvement of customer loyalty measurement in customer experience management, mobile usability researchers and practitioners are exploring better ways to define and measure user loyalty toward mobile apps / Web sites. From user recommendations and increased usage of the app to downloading additional apps, user loyalty impacts both new user growth (advocacy) and existing user growth (expansion, retention). To improve different types of user loyalty toward their mobile applications, mobile application developers need to consider different ways users can demonstrate their loyalt and use tools that help them measure and improve specific types of user loyalty.