Managers should consider the user-friendliness aspect within mobile search when incorporating mobile search into the their websites. A manager cannot change the small size of a smartphone, but it can be mastered by adapt their websites information, structure etc. Having useful information about the website in the description text on search engines is the most important fact when wanting users to visit the company’s website. Additionally, managers have to make sure that information about products/services and prices is clearly visible in the search engine list. Other information is opening hours, map/ road description and a click-to-call function. Further, users dislike scrolling and download huge volume of data to their smartphones and ratings and reviews is of least importance being presented. Therefore managers should make sure that these functions are used and correctly prioritized. In figure 6.3 below the most important information the users desires to be visible in the search engine on smartphones are ranked and presented.
Number Function
1 Description text
2 Product and service information
3 Opening hours
4 Map/ road description
5 Click-to-call function
6 Ratings /reviews
Figure 6.4 below summarizes the marketing strategy in seven steps for managers to embrace.
Figure 6.4: Mobile search engine marketing strategy
Mobile search engine marketing strategy
Choose the differentiation strategy: * Broad target scope * Narrow target scope
Identify value activities
Be technologically up to date
Make use of search engine marketing
Increase compatibility in mobile search
Improve relative advantages in mobile search
Improve user-friendliness in mobile search
6.4 Limitations of the study
During the whole project the authors have strive trying to fulfill the aspect that was aimed to be investigated and tried to minimize errors of non investigation. No study is perfect or faultless, and by that saying not even this one. Therefore the next coming session present the limitations occurred during the study.
Although the questionnaire was sent to 13 594 potential respondents, only 397 participated in the survey, resulting in a low response rate. A possible reason for this low response rate might be the fact that many other questionnaires were sent to the students’ e-mails during the same time. Another reason might be that it was found that the e-mail list was not updated and some students has already been graduated from school and therefore their e-mails had been excluded out of the system. However, 397 respondents were close to our aim of 450 respondents and therefore the data collected was judged as satisfying.
Even thought the questionnaire was based on a strong theoretical base and the hypothesis was based on the research model in chapter three, some errors encountered. When start analyzing the collected data some problems occurred, problems that prevented us to fulfill some steps in the statistical analysis. The questions regarding usefulness were stated with a very wide spread, resulting in an impossibility to perform reliability test, correlation test or regression test. Therefore this item asked regarding usefulness was fairly used further in the research procedure.
Another limitation of the study encountered when the Cronbach alpha value in the reliability test was calculated. The finding was that two variables did have a poor value. The reason for this to happened was presumably that some questions was composed for this specific investigation, and had not been included in previous research. There was also too few items asked for every variable. The variables were still used in the study.
6.5 Further research
In this section some suggestions for further research are presented, since this study could be a base for further investigations in this area.
First, the findings in this investigation are collected with a quantitative research approach with the aim of estimate why and how companies should adopt to the mobile search engine market. A recommendation for further investigations is to dig deeper into the users preferences with use of a qualitative research approach, to gain this deeper understanding of the users preferences.
Second, a recommendation for further research is to investigate other characteristics and functions in mobile search that was not tested in this study. This by letting the users shares their own interests and ideas in a qualitative research.
Third, it is recommended for further research to take the next step in this area and investigate in how the users desire the website to be. In this study only the information about the website visible in the search engine list was investigated, not very much about how the actual website should look like. It would be interesting to gain an deeper understanding of what the customer want after they past the search engine and clicked in on the webpage and also get an understanding of why they chose to visit the website. This may be performed with the same variable that was used in this study.
Fourth, it is also suggested that in further researches use questions that has already been proven, in order to avoid getting poor values when analyzing the collected data. In addition, it would be of interest for further research to try to use other items in the variable of user- friendliness in order to see if this variable could be supported.
6.6 Concluding Remarks
Even though mobile search is a new phenomenon this study generated in an advantageous insight of why and how companies should adapt their marketing strategy to the mobile search engine market. This study did also gain new theoretical knowledge in this subject by investigate in what characteristics and functions users desire when performing these mobile searches. Further, this study provided guidelines for managers to succeed in this new mobile market.