Consumer Reports: Car Buying Guide - Center for Advancing Health

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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. lxxxix 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 © 2009 Center for Advancing Health
Marketing, Promotion and Dissemination Getting Tools Used In the words of Jim Guest, executive director, CU is “doing more than ever to provide, unbiased, research-based information to consumers – when they need it, where they need it, and how they choose to receive it.” xcii Positioning Consumers are more likely to seek out and use information that they perceive is unbiased. For this reason, CU has deliberately positioned CR as a credible, third-party source of objective and unbiased information (for example, it describes CR as the best source of information for consumers). xciii • The CR tagline is “Expert. Independent. Nonprofit. © ” • One link to ConsumerReports.org on MSN Autos emphasizes “expert automotive advice.” • In 2007, trade journal Design News quoted Ford spokesman Bill Murray as saying that Consumer Reports has “‘got enormous credibility with the public and they’ve been building on it for 70 years.’” • The CR page on Facebook tells readers that “nobody tests the products you buy like Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports and ConsumerReports.org accept no outside advertising, no free test samples, and have no agenda other than interests of consumers. Consumer Reports has no relationship with advertisers on this site.” xciv Pricing Subscriptions are the primary route to gaining access to the complete set of CR vehicle profiles and comparative rankings. Figure 3 provides some CR subscription options. Case Study: Consumer Reports: Car Buying Guide 43 © 2009 Center for Advancing Health
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Consumer Reports: Car Buying Guide - Center for Advancing Health

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