There is disclosed a technique that facilitates a search for a service and use of the service available on a network. To accomplish this, steps of inputting information about a service (S100 to S102) and steps of searching a network for service providing devices capable of implementing the service about which information has been input (S103 and S104) are to be executed. Then, service providing devices found by the search are displayed (S105), a service providing device that executes the service is selected from among the multiple service providing devices displayed (S106) to cause the service providing device to execute the service about which information has been input at in the inputting step (S107).