About
Zagat guides have historically been printed books that tackled a common problem – "Where should I go eat? For what occasions?" In the past, one had to buy different books for each city.
Description of user contribution system
Zagat invites people to their website review restaurants in various cities. The content is not public. Rather, it is subscription based or you purchase a hard copy. Reviewers receive a free copy of the book for submitting 3 or more reviews, which is their incentive to participate.
The interesting thing about Zagat is that they have made the transition from the pre-Internet world to the post Internet world.
Consistent with this, they are not really a pure user-contribution system - they use editors to edit all the reviews from the participants and pick out the pithy ones to include.
Benefits for the users
This system helps users and readers find restaurants that fit their needs in various cities. Zagat guides also provide reviews of hotels, nightlife and shopping, zoos, music, movies, theater, golf, and airlines
Benefits for the creators of the system
Zagat earns money by charging for access to reviews, while significantly reducing the costs of obtaining reviews compared to a traditional restaurant guide (since reviewers are compensated with access to reviews, rather than with money). Also, Zagat receives many more reviews from which they can choose than they would with a traditional, paid writer model.
History of the idea
The Zagat Survey, upon which Zagat guides are based, was established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979 as a way to collect and correlate the ratings of restaurants by diners. Zagat's website is an extension of that approach to generating reviews.
Scale
Over 250,000 people have contributed reviews since the survey's inception. In addition to restaurants, Zagat guides rate hotels, nightlife and shopping, zoos, music, movies, theater, golf, and airlines
More resources
See also on this wiki:
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