Wright State marketing professors developing special issue of top marketing journal dedicated to mobile apps

Marketing faculty members in the Wright State University Raj Soin College of Business will serve as guest editors on a special issue dedicated to mobile apps for the Journal of Business Research.

The project includes Wright State faculty members John Dinsmore, associate professor of marketing; Kunal Swani, associate professor of marketing; Kendall Goodrich, chair of the Department of Marketing; and Umut Konus, associate professor of marketing at the University of Amsterdam.

Journal of Business Research, rated as the top marketing journal in the world by Google, is a monthly peer-review academic journal covering research on all aspects of business.

“We are fortunate in Wright State’s Department of Marketing to have multiple faculty with expertise in new areas of digital marketing such as mobile,” Goodrich said. “It is rewarding to see that we at Wright State can provide a strong contribution to the academic community in this area.”

Software apps on mobile devices are a significant and growing area of the marketing field. In the United States, 77 percent of all adults own a smartphone, adults spend more than five hours a day on their mobile devices, and 87 percent of that time is spent in an app. Mobile apps are projected to reach 284 billion downloads and $100 billion in revenues in 2020 worldwide.

Given the growth of mobile apps, Dinsmore said, he and his colleagues proposed the special issue topic to the Journal of Business Research. “It seemed crazy that there’s not more research on mobile applications,” he said.

The special issue is expected to be published in 2020. Submissions will be accepted between November 1 and December 15, 2019. See the Call for Papers.

The issue will focus on quantitative and qualitative research analyzing consumer usage of mobile applications, including app promotion, app store optimization, in-app advertising and use of geolocation in marketing.

“Mobile applications is one of the ‘hot topics’ in the field of marketing,” Swani said. “We anticipate receiving a significant number of initial submissions to be considered for publication in our special issue. The special issue will feature a variety of high-quality manuscripts relating to mobile applications that will contribute to the marketing discipline.”

Dinsmore said he hopes the issue will produce research that helps small software developers improve their products. Small developers are at a disadvantage when they have to compete against large corporations like EA Sports, which have the budget to promote products on TV and in the App Store, he said.

“So any techniques that will help the Davids of the world compete against the Goliaths is what I’m hoping for,” Dinsmore said.

Mobile apps have been a focus of Dinsmore’s research, including examining in-app purchases for mobile games, where only a very small percentage of users make a purchase.

“My research looks at ways to try to do better than that,” he said. “Because most app developers are people who are doing it on the weekends as a side gig and for the most part they’re losing money on their apps.”