Impact of Consumer Perception on College

Search Engine Websites

A SUMMER PROJECT STUDY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT FOR THE REQUIREMENT OF THE TWO YEAR POST
GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT (2015-17)
By
Vaibhav Sehgal 074/2015
Under the Guidance of Dr Gaurav Joshi

LAL BAHADUR SHASTRI INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, DELHI

JUNE, 2016

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the dissertation titled Market Research On COLLEGEDUNIAS
Competitors And Consumer Preferences Towards Search Engine Websites In Educational
Domain submitted by Vaibhav Sehgal in the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree of Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM), Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of
Management, New Delhi is an authentic record of the candidates own work carried under my
guidance. The matter embodied in the dissertation is original and has not been submitted for the
award of any other degree.

Mr. Sanjay Meena

Vice President (Sales)
Collegedunia Web Private Limited

Declaration

I, Vaibhav Sehgal, bonafide student of Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of

Management, Dwarka; hereby declare that this project report entitled Market
Research On COLLEGEDUNIAS Competitors And Consumer Preferences
Towards Search Engine Websites In Educational Domain undertaken at
Collegedunia Web Private Limited, New Delhi under the guidance of Dr Gaurav
Joshi, Professor Marketing (Project Mentor), LBSIM, New Delhi and Mr. Abhishek
Kanwar (Sales Manager) and Mr. Sanjyot Kochar (Sales Manager), is my original
work.

I also declare that the data in this report is publicly available i.e. nothing disclosed is
confidential and no part of this report has been submitted by me fully or partly for the
award of any degree, diploma, title or recognition earlier.

Place: New Delhi

(Name & Signature of the Candidate)

Date:

Vaibhav Sehgal

Roll No: 074/2015

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
It is my proud privilege to express my profound gratitude to my project guide Mr Sanjay
Meena at Collegedunia Web Private Limited, for his invaluable inspiration, guidance and
encouragement throughout this project work, without his help it would have been very difficult
to pull this project up to the present standard.
I would also like to sincerely thank my mentor, Dr Gaurav Joshi at Lal Bahadur Shastri
Institute of Management, New Delhi for her support. I would also like to express my gratitude
to Collegedunia Web Private Limited for giving me the opportunity to work with them.
Most importantly I would like to thank all the respondents who took time out of their busy
schedule and filled my questionnaire which helped me in completing my research.

Title

Page Number

Introduction

Co. & Industry Overview

13

Literature Review

28

Objectives of study

33

Findings, Analysis & Conclusion

39

Suggestions

51

Limitations of Study

53

References

55

Annexures

57

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

India has truly become a start-up Nation. Since 2010, The Indian technology start-ups
landscape has seen a tremendous growth towards creation of innovative start-ups and this
country, a home to a new breed of young start-ups, has clearly evolved to become the third
largest base of technology start-ups in the world. Within one year, the number of start-ups has
grown by 40 per cent, and this number is expected to cross 4,200 by the end of 2015.
Given this pace of growth, if the landscape continues to evolve, then by the end of 2020 more
than 11,500 start-ups are expected to get established in India, generating employment
opportunities for more than 250,000 people.65 percent of these start-ups are housed in
Bengaluru, NCR and Mumbai. Bengaluru, often referred to as Indias Silicon Valley, has been
listed within the worlds 20 leading start-up cities in the 2015 Start-up Genome Project ranking.
Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur are also emerging as start-up-hubs.
India has seen an upsurge in start-up funding. According to data from YourStory, a media body
that covers start-ups, capital worth $9 billion was invested in Indian start-ups in 2015, which is
equal to the cumulative funding in the 2010-2014 period. Online and mobile categories
dominate the deals, owing to the rising Internet population of India, now over 350 million.
Active investors in India have increased from 220 in 2014 to 490 in 2015, says NASSCOMs
report. As of December 2015, eight Indian start-ups - Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola, InMobi, Paytm,
Quikr, Zomato and MuSigma - form part of the Unicorn club (start-ups having valuation
greater than a billion dollar).
Excluding MuSigma, the other seven held the major share in 2015 funding, as around $3billion
(33 percent of total) was put into the Unicorns, says the YourStory report. ShopClues, an online
marketplace, made it to the Unicorn club last Tuesday, following an undisclosed round of
funding led by GIC, a Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund.
According to report of the Expert Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, constituted
by NITI Aayog, Indian entrepreneurs spend an average of four-to-five times more effort raising
funds compared to their American counterparts. The report cites early stage funding as a
challenge, with angel investments in India comprise only seven percent of early-stage investing
as compared to seventy-five percent in the US.
Investors in India are keener towards later-stage funding, in companies which are already
generating revenues, betting large sums of money in fewer companies, says the report. Plus,
eight out of ten Venture Capital and Private Equity firms are foreign-based.
The government has shown their interest to support the start-up ecosystem and Start-up India is
expected to take it ahead with introduction of key policy reforms. According to Nilotpal
Chakravarti, AVP of Internet and Mobile Association of India, Over the last one year, the
government has been steadily building a conducive atmosphere for encouraging start-ups in
India. Initiative like Digital India and Make in India are the biggest enablers for providing boost
to start-ups.

The top trends which ruled the scene in 2015.

Hyperlocal revolution

Your local grocer became tech savvy this year; so did your plumber and your local food
delivery boys. Biggies like Amazon, Ola, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Paytm entered the hyperlocal
grocery services in 2015. Food delivery service Yumist raised $2 million for expansion while
Swiggy ventured to Chennai, covering all tier I cities. Home services provider Housejoy went
from 40 orders a day to 4,000 in 10 months since its launch in January, while its competitor
Urbanclap backed by Ratan Tata among others got 3000 vendors in Mumbai alone. Even
offline shopping was made easier by Shopsity, a discovery platform, and digital payment
provider Momoe ventured beyond restaurants, into grocery stores, spas and salons, and apparel
stores.

Indian languages come online

It seems like at least a few entrepreneurs realised that the country does have a huge non-English
speaking population about 70-80%. If Snapdeal led the way in e-commerce by launching
itself (powered by Reverie) in Telugu and Hindi, local e-commerce start-up Storeking, which
functions exclusively with local languages, partnered with wallet services provider MobiKwik
to enable expansion. Classifieds platform Quikr is also now available in seven languages. In
news media, YourStory set a record by launching in 10 Indian languages, and InShort quickly
followed suit. The trend is sure to grow Process Nine Technologies Pvt Ltd., which partnered
with Snapdeal for translating English into different Indian languages, is already working with
players in travel and retail.

Tier II cities not so secondary anymore

Start-ups looked beyond the metros this year, and found untapped markets full of opportunities!
Faasos went to tier II cities such as Baroda and Ahmedabad, thus making their presence in total
10 cities while online grocery service Grofers went to 17 tier II cities making their presence in a
total of 27 cities. Auto rickshaw aggregator and on-demand grocery provider Jugnoo even
announced launch in tier III city Udaipur. Taxi aggregator Ola made it to total 102 cities this
year by entering tier II cities, including Kochi and Trivandrum, while rival Uber also took on
seven tier II and Udaipur cities making a total of 18. Meru cabs also went on to cover 23 cities
altogether. Even pre-owned fashion platforms have seen a majority of their orders coming in
from tier II and tier III cities, leading more logistics firms to launch in those cities.

Pooling is a virtue
It was probably the entry of French company BlaBla cars, a long distance ride-sharing service
connecting private drivers, into the country in January that ignited the idea of carpooling among
cab aggregators in India. Eight-year-old Meru Cabs launched carpooling in September. Around
the same time, US-based Uber launched the service in Bengaluru, which was followed by Ola
in a month. The trend is sure to grow, with the recent decision by the Delhi government to
implement odd-even rule in which odd numbered cars run on odd dates, and even numbered
cars on even dates provides the perfect platform for these companies to encourage pooling
for their passengers in 2016.

Sacking of the masses

Hundreds of start-up employees got the sack this year, which questioned the structure,
functioning and viability of those businesses. After the firing of Co-founder and CEO Rahul
Yadav in July, real estate platform Housing fired 600 employees in August and another 200 in
November to control cash burn. Soon, food delivery player Tinyowl fired 100 employees and
shut down its Pune office leading to Co-founder Gaurav Choudhary being held hostage
allegedly by the employees for settlements. Tinyowls rival Zomato, which joined the Unicorn
club this year, also laid off 10 percent of its workforce in November, followed by its CEO
Deepinder Goyal sending an email to the remaining employees indirectly warning them to
perform well or leave. Grabhouse joined this list a week ago, when it fired more than 150
employees.

Rise and fall of food start-ups

Food start-ups ate too much money in the first half of the year, but later it starved to death. Food
delivery start-ups saw a substantial boom in the first half of the year, with $74 million invested
in the sector in April alone. However, things deteriorated by August Zomato and Tinyowl
made news for their mass firings, and FoodPanda seemed to have been in trouble too. Lack of
funding killed Spoonjoy and Dazo in October, and Eatlo is believed to have shut down too.
Inefficiencies in delivery time and poor revenue model have made the food-tech start-ups sit up
and ponder over better strategies for the future.

10

App-commerce comes forward

E-commerce went handy this year when biggies like Flipkart and Snapdeal focused more on
their rising mobile phone traffic. India is increasingly becoming a mobile-first country, and even
startups like Elanic are going app-only for their business. Myntra made headlines when it went
app-only in May. Although Flipkart was rumoured to go app-only after shutting down its mobile
website, they later settled for a new mobile site Flipkart lite, which is claimed to be 99
percent similar to the native app but is only 10kb. Rival Snapdeal followed suit with Snap-lite,
which is claimed to be 85 percent faster than the original mobile site and is available across all
mobile browsers. With almost 70 percent of transactions coming from their apps, Amazon and
Flipkart provided some offers exclusively on apps during the festive season sales this year.

Omni channel is born

Online commerce hooked up with offline players this year, and omni channel was born. Taking
hyperlocal services to the next level, omni channel strategies brought offline players into ecommerce spectrum. Omni channel retail give more inclusivity the customers can discover
online and get the products from the brick and mortar stores. Some players like Fashalot
provide incentives through their app too. Snapdeals omni channel platform, launched in
October, integrated offline platforms to their business so that the customers can get the ordered
product picked up from or delivered from a nearby offline store. Retail giants like Tata,
Reliance, Unilever, and Aditya Birla Group etc. also took to online commerce and some of them
started selling on Flipkart and Amazon.

11

Start-ups get Ratan Tata

After retiring from his position as Chairman of Tata Group in 2012, Ratan Tata became proactive in funding startups as well as tech-based companies. He made news last year when he
invested in Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, and Blue Stone. But in 2015, Ratan Tata made 11
investments, including Ola, Paytm, Urban ladder, Xaiomi, Kaaryah, Holachef, CarDekho, and
Lybrate. His counterpart from Wipro, AzimPremji, had also invested in Myntra and Snapdeal in
2014, while Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy has invested in Amazon. It looks like corporates
have joined the startup game finally, and the younger generation is at an advantage getting to
learn from the most successful entrepreneurs the country has seen.

GharWapsi of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs

The loss of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and many other majors in Silicon Valley was Indias gain
in e-commerce. Punit Soni, the man behind the revival of Motorola and earlier product manager
at Google, left the Bay Area to come and live in India for the first time when he joined Flipkart
as the Chief Product Officer in March 2015. Flipkart was also quick in snatching Californiabased Niket Desai from Google to be its Chief of Staff in April, while Snapdeal hired Silicon
Valley veteran Gaurav Gupta as its Vice-President of Engineering. Furthermore, quite a handful
of Indian techies settled abroad came back to India and launched their own entrepreneurial
ventures this year Vikram P Kumar of Explore, Mehul Sutaria of Transitpedia, SanketAvlani
of Taxi Fabric to name a few.

Acquisition spree continues

Since Indian IPOs are not easy to come by, mergers and acquisitions have been the most
preferred exit routes for early investors and entrepreneurs. In 2015, around 200 acquisitions and
acqui-hires have taken place in the ecosystem Snapdeals acquisition of FreeCharge, Olas
acquisition of TaxiForSure, Mahindras Babyoye, Practos acquisition of Qikwell and
Instahealth, and Housings acquisition of HomeBuy360, have been notable exits. This trend is
not going to slow down as many start-ups have raised larger rounds this year to prepare their
war chests. More acquisitions could be in the pipeline for 2016.

Start-ups do have a heart

In a year when this part of the world witnessed natural disasters which killed hundreds, some
start-ups did their part to help. Proving that it is not just profit margins that they care about, Ola
provided boats and Uber gave free rides during the Chennai floods. Paytm provided free
recharge to help the public communicate, and Zomato delivered a meal free for every order
placed in Chennai. Data collection start-up SocialCops was part of the relief efforts in Chennai
floods as well as Nepal earthquake.

12

Industry Overview

13

Digital Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Last year, the number of searched on mobile devices surpassed desktop search for the first
time. 2015 was a big year for mobile- and in 2016, smart money rests on mobile-oriented
online marketing. Smart phones should be a big part of the marketers focus. If your website is
not mobile friendly, then you may lack behind your competitors.

Business Listings
Is your business listed? As the new trends are on the rise, business listing has become a vital
part of digital marketing. Listing your website on Google and other major search engines can
connect you directly with customers, whether they are looking for you on search, maps or
anywhere else.

Verified Social Accounts

As social media is not going anywhere, you need to adapt it. Verifying your business on social
media, gives your business authenticity. It will provide your business recognition, create brand
awareness and encourage traffic without spending loads of money.

Content Strategies
No doubt, content is still an important part of digital marketing. Content being one of the best
digital marketing strategies helps connecting a brand with its audience. To convert audience
into the customers, online marketers need to distinguish between content and valuable content.
Attractive blogs should include engaging words, appealing images and interesting videos. A
blog should be capable enough to engage and lure the customers to make an action.

Social Media Polls

Including polling on your social media strategy can be a great idea. Digital marketing services
include polling as it helps your business to get deep insight of customers and community in
real-time. By making the users to share the poll, you might also experience a boost in traffic to
your post.

Social Buy Buttons

Buy buttons are quite in trend now. They have been slowly appearing on social sites like
Pinterest and Twitter. Google has confirmed its testing. Even Facebook is on the verge of
initiating a buy button. The convenience of purchase directly from a social site or search engine
is going to explode in 2016.

14

Search Engine Optimization

Content Marketing Strategy

A content marketing strategy (not to be confused with a content strategy) analyses the different
ways content marketing can be used across the buyers journey, the customer life cycle and/or
the different customer (experience) touchpoints but it goes beyond that. Essentially a content
marketing strategy looks how content marketing (not content) can be used in a strategic way as
such and for and with other marketing, customer and sales strategies.

Categorized Keyword Search

SEO has evolved over the years to consider more than just singular keywords. Take the
yesteryear approach to applicable words and add in the users intent behind the search. Ranking
the appropriate keywords can be the deal breaker for top of search placement. Your mobile
audience may be looking for different content that the general desktop audience. Plan your
keyword strategy for both with precedent-set statistics and a gaze into the future of how certain
phrases may perform.

Link Building
Link building refers to the process of getting external pages to link to a page on your website. It
is one of the many tactics used in search engine optimization (SEO). Building links is a
difficult, time-consuming process as not all links are created equal. A link from an authoritative
website like the Wall Street Journal will make a greater impact on a SERP than a link from a
newly built website, but high quality links are hard to come by.

Social Media
Search your company on a variety of browsers in a variety of locations. Note if your active
social media pages Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter come up. Maintaining and growing a
social media presence can envelope the main page nicely in rank. Optimally, your webpage
would pull up first, but following should be social media channels emblazoned with up-to-date
content and an engaged community. Then, if the user does not click to your webpage first, at
least they are greeted with the essence of your brand; it is here they are invited into your brand
which is a invaluable positioning technique.

15

Web Analytics
Bounce Rate Tracking Outbound links
Your website's bounce rate is a metric that indicates the percentage of people who land on one
of your web pages and then leave without clicking to anywhere else on your website -- in other
words, single-page visitors. If visitors bounce, it suggests they either didn't find what they were
looking for, or the page wasn't user-friendly.

Custom Variables to Refine Data

The Custom Variables report lets you modify your analytics tracking code to a more refined
level for granular insight into website activity. It allows you to define additional segments that
arent already built into Google analytics. You can take advantage of custom variables as long
as you can tie a specific behaviour, like visiting a certain page on your site, clicking different
products, or logging into your website, to a segment of your visitors.

Site Search/Keyword Search

What if you could find out what people think is missing for your site? Thats easy. Just connect
your Google Analytics account to your internal site search and youll have a list of every
keyword people search for on your site. Youll know exactly what they think is missing and
what they have trouble finding.

ROI on Campaigns
Measuring the ROI of search traffic is great. But its even more important to measure the ROI
of all your marketing campaigns. After all, youre spending money and time on them. We need
to know if its worth it. Google Analytics will track any URL that you can edit. Emails,
Facebook, banner ads, you can track it all. Its also super easy to set campaigns up. Theres no
settings on your profile to manage and no new reports to activate. All you have to do is start
building campaign URLs via Googles URL Builder tool.

16

Conversion Funnels Report

After you have set up your goal and funnel, and your profile has had some time to collect data,
the Funnel Visualization report will display perhaps the single most definitive funnel
performance metric in Google Analytics: the Funnel Conversion Rate. The Funnel Conversion
Rate indicates the percentage of visits that included at least one page view of the first step
before at least one page view of the goal page.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

17

Collegedunia, launched in 2014, focuses on data and provides information on about 20,000
colleges. It covers areas like fee, placement, alumni record, rankings, awards and
extracurricular activities.
Collegedunia.com is working with an objective to make the lives of college applicants easier.
Collegedunia aims to address the vast gap between universities, institutions, students & parents.
It is an extensive search engine for the students, parents, and education industry players who are
seeking information on higher education sector in India and abroad.
With majority of Indias Internet population, especially the students accessing it on mobile,
collegedunia.com, a premier College Search engine becomes the first app to launch on the app
store.
Collegedunia has scaled the traffic to top 1022 websites in India (Alexa) and have the most
impressive growth rates for an education platform with 80000 ++ unique visitors per day.
The notifications and announcements from colleges/institutes are scattered, and students are on
the lookout for in-depth information such as detailed fee structure, scholarships available, cut
offs, the admission process, eligibility, and even co-curricular facilities. As a classifieds portal,
theyre focused on small details like amenities, fests and hostels etc. which are important for
students while taking college related decisions.
Collegedunia recently launched an exam feature where they notify aspirants about entrance
exams deadlines, provide free sample papers, tips, and counselling and result advice. Features
such as institute listings, personalized notifications, authentic alumni advice talks and college
reviews.
The start-up also plans to provide solutions to colleges and coaching institutes, such as
application management systems, customer relationship management tools and online
counselling tools, listing coaching institutes, polytechnic institutes and entrance exams details.
It plans to become the Zomato of the education industry.

Getting detailed information about colleges was the toughest part of filling the information gap.
Thats why the start-up set up a research team of about three dozen to gather data. Getting
information like reviews of students and alumni becomes really important.
Information on loans and scholarships are not available anywhere on the internet,
Therefore, Collegedunia aims to make students and parents life easier by providing organized,
detailed and genuine information to them.

18

Product Offerings

19

SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS
Counselled Responses
Collegedunia provides counselled responses which no other competitor does. The leads are
highly valued and sold by the company at the quoted price because theres no competitor
providing the same in the market.
Website Design
They have a simple 3-click website design wherein you can reach your destination with just 3
clicks on the website.
For example if a student is looking for a MBA college in Mumbai, he just needs to click on
MBA colleges States (Maharashtra) Mumbai (a 3-click process).
The design is way classier, attractive and user friendly as compared to other websites.
Everything is accessible from the home page itself and the home page is very simple too.

20

21

Content
Collegedunia has one of the best lot of content as compared to others in the education domain
because of which Google, organically ranks Collegedunia at the top for almost every keyword
therefore they dont have to put in a lot of efforts in terms of SEO because the content is already
very good and it keeps on updating on a daily basis.

For BBA colleges in India, we organically stand on the number 1 position on Google.

22

For MBA colleges in India, we organically stand on the number 3 position on Google.

23

Listings
Collegedunia lists out colleges according to their actual rank unlike other competitors. They do
have a proposition of page listings but the page listings only start after organically listing the
top colleges. Therefore they dont sell out the authenticity of the colleges.

WEAKNESS
Trust Factor
Collegedunia faces a lot of issue in regards of trust amongst the clients. Since its a start-up and
just 18 months old it doesnt have a strong client base which leads to suspicion of target
fulfilment of the clients. This poses a lot of problem in the sales of the inventory.
Back-end Operations
Operations is one of the weaknesses. Once the company gets a campaign or a partnership with
any of the colleges, there are no set rules defined for the campaign publishing process. The rules
are then and there made and created, its like checking the whereabouts, like how will they
exactly do it. Its all on trial and error basis. Theres no smooth flow of the process that if a
company gets a campaign, it easily gets in process, published and gets successful.

24

OPPORTUNITIES
TECH Team
It has its own internal Tech team comprising of 25 experts from the market. All the products that
Collegedunia has in its basket is solely made by the tech team from scratch viz. the website, the
mobile app and the other side products and software. Generally other websites outsource their
tech work to agencies whereas their tech team has made everything from the scratch including
the software LMS Leads Management System which is in process. Its a management system
being created for the clients so that they have their own private accounts to keep a check on
their deliverables.
Mobile App
They also made the mobile app which is first education search engine website in the market to
enter the mobile application system. It already has 35000+ downloads in just a span of few
months with an average rating of around 4.1.
Collegedunia immediately sensed the opportunity when it saw that the 60% of its websites
traffic is from mobile users and thats when they launched its mobile app.
Review Platform
Collegedunia is very much focused on becoming the review platform apart from just providing
the listings and college information, the website visitors are provided with authentic reviews of
colleges which will help develop trust of the customers.

25

THREATS

Shiksha.com, Careers360 and HTcampus.com are the three major threats to Collegedunia.
Careers360 is more of a threat than Shiksha.com reason being Carreers360 has a very
competitive content as compared to collegedunias content.
Whereas, Shiksha stands as a threat when we talk about banners and partner colleges and
deliverables.
26

On the other hand, HTcampus is a threat, again in terms of content and SEO rank on Google,
its ahead of collegedunia.com

27

Clients Delivered

During the Internship, I was given specific regions for sales visits namely Faridabad, Gurugram,
Palwal, Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida. To cover this region and to acquire clients, I
made approximately 75 sales visits. Besides this, I was also given the South Region of India for
cold calling in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu and Pune.
All this resulted in achieving the following clients.

28

LITERATURE REVIEW

29

The context of Web search engine research

The Search engine market
When discussing Web search engines, in most cases one arrives quickly at a discussion of
Google. In fact, Google is often seen as synonymous with Web search. However, the search
engine market is richer than it might seem at first look. Smaller companies are active, even
though they usually focus on niche markets or business applications. A major reason for this is
that while search may be highly profitable for smaller companies in these specialised areas of
search, the high costs of building and maintaining a search engine on the scale of the Web lead
to a concentration on the search engine market, with just a few major players left (Buganza &
Della Valle, 2010; for a historical perspective reaching back to 2000, see also the Search Engine
Relationship Chart Histogram, Clay, 2011a).
It may be irritating to see that many search engines claiming to search the whole of the Web
are available on the market; however, only a few of them have their own, Web scale index.
Outside of these few, most search engines license search results from other search engines, the
most famous example being Yahoo using results from Microsofts Bing search engine
(Microsoft, 2009; also see the Search Engine Relationship Chart, Clay, 2011b).
Another point to consider is the market shares of the different search engines. While there may
be at least a small variety of Web search engines, users acceptance of these choices greatly
differs greatly among them. In the U.S., we can see that while Google dominates with a share of
65 percent (Sterling, 2011), as measured in the relative number of queries entered into this
search engine, and that the Bing/Yahoo alliance follows with a considerable share of 31 percent,
the market in most European countries is much more concentrated (Lunapark, 2011). In most
countries, Google has a market share of around 90 percent.
When discussing the search engine market, it is often forgotten that while search engines are
surely commercial enterprises, they also serve as facilitators of information, and therefore, that
they serve the interests of the public (see Zimmer, 2010; van Couvering, 2008). When
considering that mainly one search engine is used, one has to ask whether this one search
engine does indeed serve these interests. While some researchers would agree with Peter Jacs
that in the ideal world one perfect search engine would suffice (Jacs, 2008, p. 864), others
argue for a plurality of search engines 3 to best serve users interests (Zimmer, 2010; van
Couvering, 2007). To agree with the former, one would have to assume that a user would be
allowed to specify how the rankings of that one search engine should be produced. While it may
be possible to give users tailor-made rankings through personalisation techniques, this tactic
would not be transparent and therefore allow the search engine provider too much power over
its users.

30

The purpose of search engine use

Extant work on understanding user Websearch behaviour focuses mainly on how users search
but not on why they search. One of the few exceptions is the taxonomy of Web searching
developed by Broader (2002), which was expanded by Rose and Levinson (2005). They
differentiate between navigational searches that intend to find a specific Web site
and information searches focused on finding information about a specific topic. A third
category is identified as transactional searches that aim to support such behaviour as
downloading software or online shopping. We implement these categories in gathering data to
understand the usage patterns of students and faculty.
Our goal is to contribute to existing research by focusing specifically on search engine use
behaviour for academic use. We seek to consider various purposes behind academic uses of
search engines and searchers perceptions and satisfaction levels with the results. The outcomes
of studies such as ours can be utilized to develop design principles to improve the functionality
of search engines, leading in turn to greater user satisfaction.

Underlying reasons behind search results viewing patterns

Several related studies conclude that search engine users are unwilling to invest additional effort
to improve their strategies and often settle on simple keyword searches, viewing only the first
results page (Haglund and Olsson, 2008; Jansen, et al., 2008; Griffiths and Brophy, 2005). This
observation is often linked to Zipfs principle of least effort, which is perceived as a natural
impulse in academics (Brophy and Bawden, 2005). The principle implies that information
seekers tend to use the most convenient search method and searches end as soon as minimally
acceptable results are found. It emphasizes an inclination on the part of most searchers to use
tools that are familiar and easy to use.
In a related study, Griffiths and Brophy (2005) conclude that students often trade the quality of
the results they obtain for effort and time spent searching and are confused about how to assess
the quality of search outcomes. Based on their study of academic researchers, Haglund and
Olsson (2008) argue that search methodology is often based on trial and error and is usually
undertaken with no particular strategy. Other studies examine the effect of search user interface
design on user behavior, such as link following, and conclude that users often do not go beyond
the top 20 results of retrieved search sets; indeed, the majority of the users view only one page
of results (OBrien and Keane, 2006; Granka, et al., 2004; Jansen and Spink, 2003).
Some studies conclude that trust and branding are significant factors in determining search
engine use behavior. For instance, Pan, et al.s (2007) eye tracking experiment reveals that
college students click on findings in higher positions also due to their substantial trust in
Googles ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. Jansen, et al.s (2009)
laboratory study also indicates that branding affects user perception in regard to search engine
performance and users generally view their favorite and familiar search engines in a positive
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manner. On the other hand, OBrien and Keane (2006) propose that underlying reason behind
this behavior is likely to be users seeking satisfactory as opposed to optimal results. One of our
research goals is to consider how our informants view search results and their overall
satisfaction with the results in fulfilling their research needs.

Refining search results

The notion of context within informationseeking behavior has received a great deal of
attention in the information retrieval (IR) literature over the past decade, primarily in studies of
information seeking and IR interactions (Cool and Spink, 2002). Recently, consideration of
context in IR has expanded to include the search engine domain as a means of addressing the
unique problems faced in this new search environment. For instance, Liao (2008) argues that we
are facing information deluge on the Web and spend much time and effort examining the results
provided by a search engine because search engines function with limited knowledge about
users preferences and search histories. A new research genre (structural reranking) now exists
to examine how to rerank search engine results, based on new contextual information, to better
list search results in an order that is more desirable to a user (Joachims and Radlinski, 2007).
Case studies such as ours that investigate search engine use in support of specific tasks will
contribute to this realm of research by addressing the context of informationseeking behavior.

Challenges to information retrieval

Web search engines are nowadays researched in many different disciplines, ranging from
computer science to the humanities. The two research communities that were concerned with
searching long before Web search engines emerged were the Information Retrieval (IR)
community, and the Library and Information Science (LIS) communities. While information
retrieval is both based on Computer Science and on LIS, the two disciplines have a distinct
view on the topic, IR being more oriented towards technical developments and system-centred
evaluation, while LIS is more focussed on user aspects and user-centred evaluation. With Web
search engines, both communities are challenged, in that (1) other communities become more
and more interested in search engine studies, (2) it becomes clear that only a deeper
understanding of Web searching will suffice, which requires a combination of methods from
different disciplines, and (3) the social impact of Web search engines, which is only sometimes
the focus of both disciplines, is an important area to consider.
But even on a technical level, Web search engines cannot be treated as just another kind of
information retrieval system. Lewandowski (2005, p. 140) divided the differences between
classic IR and Web IR into four distinct areas: documents, Web characteristics, user
behaviour, and IR systems. An important aspect here is the nature of queries entered into search
engines: Queries are generally very short (2-3 words; see Jansen & Spink, 2006; Hchsttter &
Koch, 2009) and the systems are designed to answer such shortand therefore usually very
32

generalqueries. This leads to search engines focus on high-precision documents, while in

traditional IR, a balance between a complete set of results and precise results must be found.
Directly connected with user behaviour is the design of the search engines user interfaces.
Again, a one size fits all approach has to be followed. Interfaces must be very easy to
understand and therefore cannot allow for complex interactions while building a query or
viewing the results.
The challenges search engines pose to library and information practice are obvious: Users who
are used to the comfort and fast response of Web search engines expect other information
systems to deliver the same performance. It is not uncommon that patrons compare information
systems to Web search engines, and state that where Google is able to deliver valuable results in
an instant, another searching system should also be able to do so. On the other hand, search
engines usually offer only limited search functions and do not allow for complex queries, a fact
that makes it difficult for the information professional to build precise and complex queries.

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Summer Internship Project

34

This is to present you the work on the topic Marketing Research for College Search Engine
Websites", undertaken to develop an understanding of consumer behaviour visiting search
engine websites to identify the following:

To obtain information about consumer taste and preferences.

To identify and rank choice criterion for selection and admission in colleges at
graduation and post-graduation level.

Conduct a competitive analysis which includes strategies used by market leader

(Shiksha.com)

To determine association between different variables

To understand the decision making process of a consumer.

Forwarding the same for your kind perusal and necessary action.

Objectives of Study
The primary objective of this project is to enhance the quality of the decision making at
Collegedunia and to reduce the business risk through acquisition of relevant data and
information.

Sub-objectives of this research are-

1. To determine the positioning of Collegedunia against those of its competitors in the minds of
its customers (visitors)/clientele.
2. To determine the factors that influence organic traffic on our website and reduce bounce rate.

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Research Methodology

Research method
Firstly exploratory research was conducted on secondary data to know the problem then
descriptive research has been conducted to know the choice criteria of the consumers and
various other aspects in order to take Marketing decision.

Secondary research
Secondary data are those which have been collected by someone else and which already have
been passed through statistical process. Data from various web analytics websites and data from
the website of the competitors has been collected for background work.

Primary research
Primary data is the first hand data, which are selected a fresh and thus happen to be original in
character. Primary Data was crucial to know various customers and past consumer views about
Collegedunia and other cafes and to calculate the market share of this brand in regards to other
brands. Primary research was conducted partly by floating online forms to our mates and partly
by surveying the clients directly during our sales visits.

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Measurement & Scaling

To record the data, the following techniques will be used:
1. Rank order scale
In order to know the preference, this scale would be used to rank the various brands.

2. Likert Scale
The Likert scale would be used to find out how the respondents perceive the features of various
features on our website.

3. Semantic Differential Scale

Respondents would rate the various search engine websites they are aware of on various
attributes.
These individual rating scales would be combined to study the overall effect of all the attributes
and different attitude scales would be used to rank items.

Sampling Plan
Population: Sampling unit is the population which is to be targeted .The research was done in
Delhi-NCR& Pune and the respondents were in the age group of 19 and above.
Sampling Unit: A single section selected to research and gather statistics of the whole. Here it
is a visitor on College Search Engine Websites.
Sampling Element: These are the ultimate respondents for the research questionnaire and
include a group of potential visitors namely students, families corporate houses and
professionals.
Sampling Frame: Potential visitors and clients who visit the Collegedunia application and
website.
Sample Universe: All the potential visitors and clients who visit college search engine
websites.

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Sample size is calculated by using the following formula:

Z=1.96 as size is under 95% confidence interval.

Sigma is calculated from formula (Range/6)
Range = 6 (Semantic Differential scale used 1-7)
Sigma(s)= 6/6= 1
E= error limit while calculating number of samples, 10%.
Therefore sample size N= 384 approximate
Sample size: 384
Methods of Data Collection
It details the procedure necessary for obtaining the information needed to structure or solve
Marketing research problems. The present study is an exploratory research and involves the use
of Survey Method.
Research Instrument: Questionnaire
A set of predetermined questions for all respondents that serves as a primary research
instrument in survey research.
Used to collect factual information.
Consist of a form containing a series of questions.

Purposes of the Questionnaire

Ensures standardization and comparability of the data across interviews everyone is asked
the same questions.
Increases speed and accuracy of recording
Facilitates data processing
Allows the researcher to collect the relevant information necessary to address the management
decision problem

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Data analysis
To analyse the data statistical tool SPSS is used. In the field of Marketing Research SPSS
proves to be a very effective tool. After the data was collected we applied tests such as factor
analysis to reduce the number of variables (which are causing the least variance). MultiDimensional Scaling has also been used to analyse our competitors which helped us come to a
conclusion. Besides excel and graphs have been used extensively in this research.

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Findings

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Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is a form of exploratory multivariate analysis that is used to either reduce the
number of variables in a model or to detect relationships among variables. All variables
involved in the factor analysis need to be interval and are assumed to be normally distributed.
The goal of the analysis is to try to identify factors which underlie the variables. There may be
fewer factors than variables, but there may not be more factors than variables. It is a statistical
method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a
potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors.
Analysis:
Step 1: Bartletts test & KMO
Null Hypothesis H0: The variables are uncorrelated
Alternative Hypothesis H1: The variables are correlated with each other.
Test Statistic: KMO and Bartlett's Test
Level of significance: 5%

Interpretation:

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Test:
KMO measures sampling adequacy, i.e., appropriateness of factor analysis. Its value should be
greater than 0.5 to proceed. Since, in this case value of KMO is 0.721 which is greater than
0.5. Thus, factor analysis is appropriate.

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Bartletts Test:
It indicates the strength of relationship among variables. It tests the null hypothesis stated
above. Since, in this case, significance value is 0.000 which is lower than 0.05. Thus, it is
statistically significant and thus, null hypothesis is rejected.
Step 2: Communality
It shows that how much of the variance in a variable has been accounted for by the extracted
factors. Thus, it shows the percentage of variance in a variable that is captured by the common
underlying factor.

In this case, the value is highest for variable 14 and is lowest for variable 11.

Step 3: Total Variance Explained

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Eigen values represents the percentage of total variance explained by each factor. In this case,
first five factors cumulatively explain 73.149% of the total variance.

Step 4: Component Matrix

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Rotation Component Matrix:

It reduces the number factors on which the variables have high loadings. It does not actually
change anything but makes the interpretation easier.
It shows loading of sixteen variables on the 5 factors extracted. The higher the absolute value of
the loading, more the factor contributes to variable. All the loadings that are greater than 0.5 are
considered while suppresses all other loadings lesser than 0.5.

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45

The five major factors for Collegedunia to focus upon are User Interface & Content,
Rankings & Accessibility, Availability of Brochure, Convenience Features and
Advertisements.
Advertisements and Availability of Brochure have been the stand alone attributes in the
above described factors.
It explains Banners, Listings and Social Media Marketing are integral part of a website
in educational domain.
Brochure brings the viewers in direct touch with various colleges and helps answer the
doubts in their mind.

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Multi-Dimensional Scaling
Attribute Based Mapping: To identify attributes which best discriminates college search
engine websites and develop an attribute based perceptual map.

We have taken 7 dependent categorical variable applications namely:

Collegedunia
Shiksha
HT Campus
PaGaLGuY
Minglebox
MBA Universe
Careers360

And independent variable attributes:

Functionality
Website Design
Compatibility
Quality of Information Presentation
Originality and Freshness of Content
These are rated based on the perception of consumer, i.e.; importance a brand has given to the
particular attribute (1=Lowest, 7=Highest)

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Since all the functions except one are less than .05 that is statistically significant and explain
cumulative 100% of variance, Therefore we will continue with the significantly discriminant
functions.
Also, 4 Functions significantly discriminate the websites.

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Now with the help of following tables we will plot attributes and brands on the map taking
discriminant functions as dimensions.
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Perceptual Map
50

From the perceptual map, we see that Function 2 is characterized by Website Design while
Function 1 is characterized by Functionality, Originality and Freshness of Content and Quality
of Information Presentation.
Collegedunia scores high on F1 dimension, Consumers who attach a higher importance on
Functionality would prefer Collegedunia, as Collegedunia is perceived strong on Functionality.
None of the search engine websites score high on Function 2 which is characterized by Website
Design.
Since Compatibility is not close to either of the functions, therefore it is not represented by any
of the dimensions.
Collegedunia is close to the origin, suggesting that it is significant in the college search engine
domain. However, it is a part of a cluster namely Collegedunia, Careers360, MBA Universe and
HT Campus and thus does not have its own USP.
The closest competitors for Collegedunia would be HT Campus and MBA Universe and are the
potential reason behind loss of sales to Collegedunia.

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Suggestions

52

Collegedunia needs to increase its top of the mind recollect.

Five major factors have been identified for Collegedunia to focus on, User Interface &
Content, Rankings & Accessibility, Availability of Brochure, Convenience Features and
Advertisements.

Banners and Mobile application are strong points of Collegedunia and these need to be
leveraged.

Website Design and Compatibility are determining attributes and should be emphasized upon.

Collegedunia need to undertake a campaign, aimed at customer in age bracket 18-24 as they
formulate the major share of organic traffic and there is a lot of scope for this age bracket to
become loyal Collegedunia visitors.

Collegedunia does not have its own USP in the eyes of viewers. Hence, the increasing bounce
rate.

Collegedunia is facing intense competition and needs to undertake aggressive campaigns to

draw Customers/clientele towards it.

Collegedunia should focus on people working in education sector as they can promote the
website easily to their target audience.

Brand Image of Collegedunia needs to be communicated to prospective clientele so as to draw

them in for maximum sales.

USP of Collegedunia needs to be communicated to the customer without compromising on its

already existing clientele.

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Limitations of the study

54

The research is limited only to New Delhi and Pune; hence error might creep in while
generalizing the results.

The sample size of 384 might not be adequate to generate a general perception about the
search engine websites characteristics of Delhi and Pune.

The respondents might not have disclosed their actual viewpoint to questions in which they
had to recall from their past experiences.

Consumer is a focal point in the market research. However, his buying motives are difficult to
judge precisely and accurately

Partly convenience sampling so chances of biased views is there.

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REFERENCES

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 Kotler, P (2013), Marketing Management (14th edition). New Jersey: Pearson education
international.

Malhotra, Naresh K. & Das, Satyabhushan (2013). Marketing Research (6th edition).
New Jersey: Pearson education international.

Data for analysis. (April May 2016). Retrieved from Google Analytics
(https://www.google.com/analytics/web/)

New perspectives on Web search engine research by Dirk Lewandowski Hamburg

University of Applied Sciences, Germany
yourstory.com/2015/12/startup-india-trends-made-2015-landmark-year/
https://hbr.org/1985/07/how-information-gives-you-competitive-advantage
Collegedunia.com

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Annexure

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Questionnaire

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