The Involvement Construct in Product Search Queries

Search engines can decisively be regarded as the modern-day yellow pages. Even though a large proportion of search engines is determined by automated search algorithms, it is the user that issues a specific search query and selects the links that are deemed relevant. An overwhelming amount of information is presented to us through most search engines, which makes the question of how we orient ourselves and how we retrieve information ever more important. This experimental research aimed to unravel some of the dynamics that are at play when consumers interact with search engines. A 2 (involvement: high involvement versus low involvement) x 2 (corresponding sponsored listings versus non-corresponding sponsored listings) between subjects design was conducted among predominantly university students. Departing from the Elaboration Likelihood Model, high- and low involvement situations were simulated to evoke high- and low levels of elaboration with the participants. All participants were assigned with the same search query, and exposed to one of two fixed search engine results pages. In the high involvement condition, participants seemed more likely to scrutinize the search results list and not to blindly follow a peripheral cue such as search ranking, which resulted in them more often opting for a search result that was located at the bottom of the page. The ‘second opinion effect’, a said ‘click aphrodisiac’ for consumers looking up products, did not manifest itself as a peripheral cue in this research. Conversion rates proved to be higher for the bottom organic search results. Overall there was a tendency among respondents to avoid sponsored listings, which also returned the lowest conversion rates. This research provided new theoretical insights in to the search engine dynamics, connecting heuristic and systematic processing to SERP interaction. For managers, it provides valuable insights into valuable marketing variables pertaining to search engine marketing and search engine optimization. This is especially relevant given the increased spend in search-engine based advertising in recent years.