[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Most annoying however, is that the models they test are almost always gone by publication time.
I just got my CR within the last couple of days, but I can almost guarantee that at least 70% of any electronic equipment models they rated in that issue will not be on the shelves of any store I care to consider buying them at. Their ratings in these categories are often less than worthless.
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There is, I suspect, another problem which is what I call the “Choice” effect (that being the name of the Australian magazine of the same type).
When they do a test and find a particular widget that is cheap and very good, it sells out very quickly and I suspect that the manufacturer makes sure they discontinue it for reasons that are counter intuitive but not so much if you understand how the widget market works.
The sale price of widgets is set by marketing people according to what the market will bear, and how the most money can be extracted from the most people, not by price of manufacture (which merely sets a floor). Manufacturers sell (as a typical example) an entry price widget, a mid price widget and an upper price widget. The disparity in price in no way reflects the disparity in manufacturing cost.
The entry price widget typically lacks a few features but in no way does that lack justify the price drop: the features are missing just so that it justifies the purchase of the model above by those that can or will. At the same time, the manufacturer can still make some money out of those with with little money to spend, which it wouldn’t if it priced all its widgets high.
The upper price widget similarly has a few additional features, but again in no way does the cost of those features necessitate the price hike. One of the big features that the upper price widget often has is prestige and reputation. This is achieved by selling upper price widgets under a different brandname upon which the manufacturer has lavished marketing expenditure in order to convince people that the brand is higher quality, more prestigious etc. even though the upper price widgets may well differ only in terms of a few stickers and mouldings from the lower price widgets, and come from the same factory. This allows the manufacturer to extract more money from the rich while selling them nothing much more than they sold the poor for half the price.
If Choice/CR does a report that shows that [low price point] Type A Brand X widgets are cheaper, better, more reliable and easier to use than [high price point] Type B Brand Y widgets, then that will kill the sales of the latter. And the latter is where the the real profit is. So if one manufacturer owns Brands X & Y, they certainly don’t want Type A Brand X widgets on the market.
[QUOTE=kurahee]
They NEVER seem to rate expensive products/appliances well. I’m talking about house appliances, like Viking and SubZero, and vacs like Kirby. These things are always rated low, and they are so over the top expensive, that I wonder how they stay in business. That makes me believe that C.R. does target a certain audience, older folk of average means. If Viking products suck as bad as CR says (expensive, repair prone, etc, etc), the company would shut their doors.
Someone is buying them. I can’t believe rich people are all stupid when it comes to this stuff.
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What marketing people know, but most consumers don’t like to admit to themselves as much as they should, is that in the absence of objective information people assume expensive things must be better.
I have heard (but admittedly never actually from first hand sources) that an experiment was done in which catfood sales were proved to increase by increasing the price while controlling all other variables.
How much objective information does the average consumer have in order to determine that a particular product is actually better quality?
Many rich people got where they are by being savvy about appearances. They care that they are seen to have expensive widgets, not whether they actually work better.
