Gradual Change of the Diffusion Process in the Maturation of the Smartphone Game Market

Abstract

This study focuses on the smartphone game market and examines the gradual change of the new product diffusion process from introductory stage to maturation stage of the market. Especially, this study analyzes the diffusion process based on the theory of consumer behavior and market diffusion. As a result, this study empirically shows that consumers tend to download new game apps through the internal search and the speed of diffusion of new apps becomes shorter at the maturation stage. These empirical results imply that firms have to call many users as can as possible just after the release of new apps and achieve the steep take-off of the number of downloads in the matured market. In addition, the optimal new product development and marketing strategies to adopt the market environment are provided based on the findings.