Trust based app marketing : design, implementation and evaluation

Abstract

A trust-based marketing application is a web or mobile app which provides a utility to the consumer that is not directly linked to purchasing products or services from the company. In this thesis, I explore the efficacy of trust-based marketing apps by designing and building two apps{one iPhone app and one Adobe Flash app{ and test them under market research conditions. These apps attack two important and complementary questions: how trust-based apps compare to traditional stimuli such as television ads; and how different dimensions of app design (degrees of social network embeddedness, customizability, and information discovery) affect the efficacy of a trust-based app. I build a Flash-based design environment capable of basic image manipulations, I design a web engine that organizes tens of thousands of images used in the design environment, and I build modular systems for parsing, logging, and data extraction-essential features for testing how consumers interact with these apps. Analysis of the iPhone app study demonstrates excellent results for trust-based marketing apps, with a favorable comparison against television ads that included a 60% greater increase in consideration and a 34% greater increase in preference for the sponsoring company (compared to television ads). Analysis of the Flash app is forthcoming as the study is in market research at the time of writing.