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Mobile vs desktop user search behaviours of the 1300K site, a Korean shopping search engine

Soyeon Park (Department of Library and Information Science, Duksung Women’s University, Seoul, Republic of Korea)
Kihun Cho (NHN, Seongnam-si, Republic of Korea)

The Electronic Library

ISSN: 0264-0473

Article publication date: 15 June 2021

Issue publication date: 17 July 2021

287

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate and compare mobile and desktop user search behaviours of the 1300K site, a Korean shopping search engine, by using transaction log analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

Transaction logs of 1300K site were collected over a three months’ period, from 1 January to 31 March 2018. The data set of this study consists of 1,149,690 desktop queries, 2,346,938 mobile queries, 2,481,747 desktop browsing activities and 2,550,309 mobile browsing activities. This study quantitatively analyses transaction log of 1300K site.

Findings

The results of this study show that mobile usage is higher than desktop usage: there are more mobile sessions than desktop sessions and the number of mobile queries is more than double of desktop queries. Overall, mobile query search behaviours are more simple, targeted and focused than desktop query search behaviours. Also, mobile browsing behaviours are more simple and passive than desktop browsing behaviours. However, mobile click behaviours are more active than desktop click behaviours.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study appears to be the first of its type in Korea that compared search behaviours of a large number of users on desktop computers and mobile phones. To identify various characteristics of user search behaviours, this study analyses users’ directory browsing behaviour and click behaviour as well as query search behaviour. The results of this study can be implemented to address the effective improvement and development of search services and interfaces for different devices.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NHN, a global IT company in Korea.

Citation

Park, S. and Cho, K. (2021), "Mobile vs desktop user search behaviours of the 1300K site, a Korean shopping search engine", The Electronic Library, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 239-257. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2020-0261

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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