Digital Internalization of Born Global Apps: A Case of Pint Please

Objectives The first objective of this study was to find how existing literature covers the factors affecting the adoption of mobile apps internationally. The other objectives were to discover what motivates external organizations to implement a social sharing strategy for a lifestyle app to aid its digital internationalization and identify the contexts of such organizations. Summary There is no coherent understanding of how apps should market themselves if they aim to internationalize. Previous literature suggests that the digital internationalization of apps depends on the pace of user adoption. Social sharing is a proposed method to succeed in digital internationalization, but the factors contributing to its success are unknown. This research developed a conceptual framework to guide lifestyle apps to internationalize digitally with a social sharing strategy. A case study approach was taken to test how the conceptual framework explains the factors behind successful app internationalization. Primary data was collected with a quantitative questionnaire, and regression analysis was used for analysis. Conclusions Secondary research identified how lifestyle apps could use external partners in their digital internationalization, found that the TOE model may be suitable for identifying possible partners, and highlighted the significance of motivation. Primary research found the hypotheses regarding the conceptual framework to be non-significant in the case study