Consumer Reports
You’ve got a friend at Consumer Reports magazine.
Written by Filed under Business, Life
Test. Inform. Protect. Each and every month upwards of twenty million people religiously turn to a non-profit organization in Yonkers, New York, for product ratings and advice on purchasing everything from breakfast cereal to cars. And, for sixty-five years, Consumer Reports magazine has done the near-impossible, publishing its unbiased test results without accepting a single advertising dollar. To top things off, in an age when conventional wisdom says that readers just won’t pay for content on the Internet, the magazine has challenged that notion with over 500,000 paid subscribers to its Web site, consumerreports.org.
Founded as Consumers Union in 1936, the consumer advocacy group started Consumer Reports as a means to present its research findings on a wide variety of consumer goods. Today, its staff of 160 testing experts produces a broad collection of products and properties including a radio show, Consumer Reports television, health and travel newsletters, special edition publications, a children’s Web magazine, zillions.org, and of course, Consumer Reports.
To take a closer look at the inner workings of Consumer Reports, Failure magazine’s editor, Jason Zasky, visited its Yonkers headquarters and spoke with the man responsible for “the largest and best-equipped consumer testing lab in the United States”—Dr. R. David Pittle, Senior Vice President & Technical Director of Consumers Union.
What is the mission of Consumer Reports?
Our whole goal is to try to take the confusion out of the marketplace, because advertising and the claims made [about consumer products] aren’t always reliable. We evaluate the things our subscribers tell us they want to know about. That involves a very long list of what we call ‘sweaty palm’ issues—washers, dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, automobiles, televisions, microwave ovens—things that have a fairly significant expense to them and people don’t know how to judge their performance when making a purchase.
We also test products the way we think consumers will use them. There are a lot of standards in the world—many of them are commercial standards—created to help a buyer, retailer or distributor, judge what they’re buying. But a consumer wants to know; How does it look? How does it feel? How convenient is it? If I use it in a way that’s predictable of a consumer, how will I experience it? That’s the way we look at it. We’re in the consumers’ corner as their advisor.
Dogged Pursuit
The Man Who Made Vermeers
The Five-Year Party
That Used To Be Us (January/12)
Remedy and Reaction (December/11)
The End (December/11)
