Comment by ruswick | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ruswick | Hacker News Reader

Marco seems to make this unjustified and unelaborated assertion that price has no bearing on popularity, and the only differentiation between prices in free vs. paid. I'm not sure why this would be so for the App Store. Purchasing software, like purchasing any product, is necessarily a balance between utility and price. I, as a value-oriented consumer, have a finite amount of money that I wish to conserve, yet want to maximize my utility from the product. I could buy a BMW, which would make me happy and increase my utility, but would also put me massively in debt and be fiscally untenable. Because of this, I'm more likely to purchase a low-end sedan, which will function adequately but not break the bank. At the more minute level, I have to decide between superior name brands and cheaper generics. This also entails evaluating cost and utility. The same is true of apps. If I'm presented a choice between an app that does 100% of what I want but costs $3 and an app that does 70% of what I want and costs a single dolar, I will be forced to evaluate the utility of that added utility of that app versus the larger price. That is how decisions in commerce work.

People make purchasing decisions based partially on price... I'm not sure why (or how) Marco is trying to refute that fact.

I think you're right that most people evaluate app prices this way but the problem is that the net result of scrutinizing such inexpensive purchases so carefully is that all prices are pushed to rock bottom.

The biggest issue with the app store is that apps are undifferentiated. They're all lumped into a big uniform grid and psychologically this communicates that they're all units of some kind of uniform commodity, when nothing could be further from the truth on the production side. At least in the old shrink wrap world you had a lot more ability to physically differentiate your product.

It also doesn't help that any random moron can post an inaccurate or unfair one star review of your app and that's the very first thing any prospective buyer sees.

I agree with you. I also think the "evaluation of utility" of Apps is poor. IMO, You can't really evaluate the utility by just the screenshots and reviews. It would be great if just like a car, you could "test drive" the App. Download a version that would work for x mins and would automatically present you an option to buy or delete after x mins.

Google play lets you return apps within 15 minutes. Does the app store not have anything similar?

http://support.google.com/googleplay/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&...

There is no official way to get an App Store refund, but it does apparently happen, here is a guide on how one might do so:

http://gizmodo.com/5886683/how-to-get-a-refund-from-the-app-...

That's how the Windows Phone and Windows 8 stores work – paid apps can offer a trial version.

i believe, utility and price decision makes more sense for prices larger than impulse buying seed (>>$120). From $120 to $5, $5 to $1, $1 to 10cents and below 10cents have all different consumer behavior dynamics, for a cosmopolitan american buyer. So apps below $1 and $15 are all different stories for consumers. For <1$, visibility, jumping to leaderboard matters more. For a $15 product utility mattes more, but still an impulse buying decision can be forced.

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