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Top1. Introduction
The mobile applications business, also called “app economy”, is worth several billion dollars (Puschmann & Alt, 2016). Mobile applications (or simply mobile apps) help firms enhance their reach and access new market segments in the digital economy (Middleton, Scheepers, & Tuunainen, 2014). Mobile apps are central to the smartphone experience and with smartphones witnessing an exponential growth (Carter & Yeo, 2016) it is natural that the mobile apps business shall also witness rapid growth. In fact, smartphone penetration is witnessing rapid growth in both developing and developed economies. Currently, mobile apps are being used as a marketing tool to support information sharing and social networking-based marketing efforts (Gasimov et al., 2010) and are positively affecting consumer behavior (Grewal, Roggeveen & Nordfält, 2017).
Prior research suggests that the context or situation, impacts the customer perceived value (CPV) significantly e.g., Kleijnen, De Ruyter, & Wetzels (2007). The unique context of the current research is to study the factors influencing the adoption of mobile news apps. There already are studies on different types of mobile apps (e.g. online shopping apps: Shukla & Sharma, 2018; Wang, Malthouse, & Krishnamurthy, 2015; Willman, 2015, Frohlke & Pettersson, 2015; health and fitness apps: Beldad & Hegner, 2018; Klenk, Reifegerste & Renatus, 2017; Cho, Lee & Quinlan, 2015; banking apps: Noh & Lee, 2015; Zhou, 2011; multiple apps: Carter & Yeo, 2016; tourism and hospitality: Tan, Lee, Lin, & Ooi 2017; Kim, Chung, Lee & Preis, 2016; and fashion retail: Moon & Domina, 2015) amongst others. However, surprisingly, studies on mobile news apps are still rare (Westlund, 2013; Chan-Olmsted, Rim, & Zerba, 2013; Xu, Forman, Kim & Ittersum, 2014).