Product changes have become a central strategy for firms operating in digital markets. By refining, removing, or adding components, firms can improve existing products in response to technological change and evolving user needs. However, product changes involve an inherent trade-off. While it can renew product value and stimulate user engagement, it may also disrupt established usage patterns and impose adjustment costs on users, shaping how strongly these benefits are realized. Using a longitudinal dataset of weekly observations from 37,844 video games on Steam over a ten-year period, we find that product changes are, on average, positively associated with user engagement. However, the magnitude of this association varies systematically with user community characteristics. The positive association is stronger for products with more familiar user communities, but weaker when users allocate attention broadly across alternative products or when the user community is more highly concentrated. These findings highlight demand-side conditions that shape how product changes translate into user engagement.
- When Do Product Changes Stimulate User Engagement? The Role of User Communities
- Qiujie Qiu - Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation)Roxana Turturea - Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation)Holmer Kok - Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation)
- Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, Vol.2026(1)
- Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting, 86th (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2026-07-31–2026-08-04)
- Academy of Management (AoM)
- Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation); Center for Security and Resilience; House of Governance and Public Policy; Karl-Adam Bonnier Center for Governance
- English
- Conference paper