Question.495 - Chapter 10 Case Study 1. Evaluate Zagat using the competitive forces and value chain models. 2. Compare Zagat’s and Yelp’s e-commerce business models. How have those models affected each company’s Web strategy? 3. Why was Zagat’s content well suited for the Web and for the mobile digital platform? 4. Do you think Zagat’s decision to use a paywall for its Web site was a mistake? Why or why not? 5. Will Zagat’s acquisition by Google make it more competitive? Explain your answer
Answer Below:
Chapter 10 - Case Study Questions 1. Evaluate Zagat using the competitive forces and value chain models. In the given case, Zagat creates a restaurant guide based on the reviews given by customers. The guide involved user reviews without any biased comments of customers or least inaccuracy. The information involved in the guide only related to hotels, restaurants, and night life. He only focused to publish the guideline in hub cities like Chicago and New York and then moved to les populated cities. But the first issue came out when he planned to take those publications to online platform. The online portal was not good enough to deliver the customers needs. The collected reviews from visitors were not available on the portal. They tried to sell the company in the year 2008, but the plan has flopped and the business continued. In value chain analysis, Zagat was left behind in following the modern trends by only collecting data of thousand customers, while Yelp collected more than that. The search engine implemented by Zagat was not that competitive due to the inability of search bots to move under the wall. 2. Compare Zagats and Yelps e-commerce business models. How have those models affected each companys Web strategy? The transaction system used by Zagat was based on the membership method or strategy where customers with authorization can give reviews. As a result, this can cut down any new reviews and also limits customers who want to do their reviews by sharing their experiences on the website. This would help visitors in the form of a guide. Like Zagat, Yelp also uses an online transaction method but it allows any users to access data or just read and leave the information with editions or modifications. Zagat makes it available only for chosen users to comment and review. These reviews are then included in the published guidebook. These entries with good quality are attractive to new visitors. Besides, the content written on the website of Zagat is well researched and created, but users can only view it once they make payments. The articles published by Yelp are not as well researched as Zagats. But users can add more information or edit it. All type of visitors like sellers, buyers, and customers provide their opinions in the form of reviews, but they are not as professional as Zagats one. These people were authorized entirely to write essays and were visible to almost everyone. 3. Why was Zagats content well suited for the Web and for the mobile digital platform? Zagats content uploaded in the website was created in a very professional way and was genuine. It means that the reviews added in the website were written by experts or professionals. This type of content is appropriate for the mobile digital platform because the articles or content uploaded is structured and based on the regions in which the content was published and includes restaurants and cuisines. Besides, the content that is published on the digital platform has been streaming more, the content produced by professionals in Zagats website has more quality and hence it has no jumbles and pure personal ideas. In the first step, the restaurant is introduced with details of its location and if the visitor likes the restraint details, it can be checked for details by the scroll option. These are the reasons why Zagats content is well suited for the Web and for the mobile digital platform. 4. Do you think Zagats decision to use a paywall for its Web site was a mistake? Why or why not? I believe Zagats decision to use a paywall for its Web site was a mistake as it caused him a failure in the market in front of competitors. Visitors or users had various alternatives apart from Zagats restaurant. Even though the alternative options were smaller, they found it as easy and better to switch. Basically, consumers significantly preferred to choose the one who serves them with free consent. If they were asked or forced to pay money through pay wall, they chose to look for other alternatives, which are providing resources free in the beginning. Most users prefer to use the Google search engine to check or search for anything they need. Zagats alternatives or so-called competitors mention free tags on their posts, which attracts most users compared to Zagat, who has not provided any such offers. This will influence users not to visit Zagats website. One more thing which Zagat should not have done is ask users to pay to see reviews. It totally brought failure to Zagat. 5. Will Zagats acquisition by Google make it more competitive? Explain your answer Yes, Zagats acquisition by Google will make it more competitive. The first reason is that the content is mostly created is mostly professional and well structured without any jumbles and this fulfills all the requirements of Google in the internet platform. The acquisition of Google has enabled the content uploaded or published in the website is now available (that was not available previously) and helping to attract customers or users. The collection of review records is a continuous process kept by Zagat and selling that as a book is profitable for both Google and Zagat. Such acquisition is necessary and advantageous for Google as it improves the Google internet market and benefits Zagat in gaining importance in the Google internet market.More Articles From Management Information System
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