Consumer Reports: Car Buying Guide - Center for Advancing Health

Other adjunct offerings include:
Getting Tools Used
• CR Bottom Line Price reports, which let users compare the manufacturer's suggested retail
price, dealer invoice price, and the price that CR suggests offering when starting to
negotiate a specific make/model purchase.
• Ratings and reviews of, recommendations on and buying guidance on a variety of carrelated
products and services, such as global positioning systems (GPS), auto insurance
and extended warranties.
• An interactive game to assess and develop negotiating skills on the 1996 CR Cars
multimedia CD-ROM, in which users could haggle with a dealer and receive an assessment
of their performance at the end. lxxxviii
• Concierge telephone service to individuals who donate $1,000 or more to the Consumer
Reports Foundation, as part of the benefits of being a President’s Circle donor. Through the
service, donors can call CR and have them send information on a given product by fax, email
or mail.
In addition, Consumers Union state offices in California, D.C., New York and Texas advocate
for consumer rights and interests. The nonprofit indicates it has 500,000 consumer eactivists.
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Updating
• CR publishes its annual car and truck issue each April.
• Every month CR updates the online car buying guide, primarily with the results of that
month’s testing group results.
• CR blogs and the Auto News section of the Web site, all of which is written by CR editorial
staff, offer supplemental expert information and guidance on timely topics. Car forums
change daily as visitors and subscribers post comments and questions.
• CUR constantly tweaks the beta new-car selector as users submit feedback. After the
initial launch, CR quickly discovered the original beta tool was too slow to be practical to
use because it loaded the entire CR database with car information. Subsequent versions of
the beta tool have users pick selection criteria as a first step, which reduces the volume of
data that the system uploads and processes for users.
• CR offers Cars Newsletter, which it describes as featuring “the latest car-related trends and
news, maintenance information, insight into upcoming tests, and provides the expert,
independent, and unbiased autos information and advice that only Consumer Reports can
offer.” xc
• CU added an A-to-Z index as an online navigation aid that, in the words of a CU librarian,
xci
enables “serendipitous discovery” of other CR content.
• As technology changes, CR updates its vehicle test methods and review process.
Case Study: Consumer Reports: Car Buying Guide 42
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