How a TV show can impact mobile app downloads?

Consumer behaviour refers to the study of customers and how they behave while deciding to buy a product/service. In this article let’s see how a TV show influence consumer behaviour and create an impact on mobile app downloads?

Consumer buying behaviour studies about various situations such as what do consumers buy, why do they buy, when do they buy, how often do consumers buy, for what reasons do they buy and much more.

Would you believe if I say, “The Queen’s Gambit” ♛ show on Netflix has created a buzz and that created a huge surge in the sales of chess boards, and it’s totally relatable to this particular show?

Yes, it does. Not just people playing chess boards offline, users are downloading chess related gaming apps too.

The Queen’s Gambit ♛ novel by Walter Tevis is now in The New York Times bestseller list (37 years after its release)

The first episode of “The Queen’s Gambit” ♛ went air on 23rd Oct 2020:

• People started searching a lot more about chess.
• Google search queries for chess have doubled.
• Google searches for ‘how to play chess’ have hit a nine-year peak.

It’s quite fascinating to see how consumer (viewers) buying behaviour is triggered by a category (tv show) and not by any other brand, that’s really interesting.

Viewers feeling compelled to buy something depicted in a show without any specific call to action is every marketer’s dream.

Now let’s see how a TV show impact app downloads? 

Out of curiosity, with the success of the Queen Gambit ♛ on Netflix, I’m expecting a surge in volume for chess apps (I’m one of them who plays chess using mobile apps)

I took the most popular web and app based platform called Chess.com; it actually ranked top in the games category rankings all over the world. It reached the top positions of the strategy games category in many countries where I can easily correlate it with the popularity of Netflix’s show.

Here are a few insights and key metrics on the same:

💎 App Power History

The “App Power” is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that shows the overall performance of an app in the store.

It is built on a scale of 0-100, being 100 the highest and 0 the lowest number and all these started from 23rd October.

💎 Ranking History Trends

It’s so evident that the ranking for this particular app has massively surged in the last 30 days.

💎 World Wide Ranking 

#1 spot in 7 different countries on 04th December, including Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom. Across 94 different countries, the game made the top 5 of the category in 35 countries including Brazil, United States, Turkey, Spain and India.

Here’s an interesting thing are the comments on youtube videos about “how to play chess?”

This is quite interesting to see how TV shows have influenced consumer behaviour, and it’s all way influencing the app store customers’ search behaviours and how different parts of the digital world tie together. Trust me, and it’s proven that even a TV show can impact mobile app downloads.

Surprisingly, either the product chess boards or any chess gaming apps have not been advertised by any well-known brand.

As a marketer, we should constantly try to find new ways and means to connect with our customers and have begun to turn to moment marketing to get our message across with more relevance.

For smart marketers, moment marketing can help them reach out to a large number of customers spontaneously and at a low cost. This could help them improve recall and form a deeper connection with audiences over the long term.

Check out my recent post on 7 key metrics for mobile app success.