American organization and magazine
Consumer Reports (CR), formerly Consumers Union (CU), is an American nonprofit consumer organization dedicated to independent product testing, investigative journalism, consumer-oriented research, public education, and consumer advocacy.
Founded in 1936, CR was created to serve as a source of information that consumers could use to help assess the safety and performance of products. Since that time, CR has continued its testing and analysis of products and services, and attempted to advocate for the consumer in legislative and rule-making areas. Among the reforms in which CR played a role were the advent of seat belt laws, exposure of the dangers of cigarettes, and more recently, the enhancement of consumer finance protection and the increase of consumer access to quality health care. The organization has also expanded its reach to a suite of digital platforms. Consumer Reports Advocacy frequently supports environmental causes, including heightened regulations on auto manufacturers.
The organization's headquarters, including its 50 testing labs, are located in Yonkers, New York, while its automotive testing track is in East Haddam, Connecticut. CR is funded by subscriptions to its magazine and website, as well as through independent grants and donations. Marta L. Tellado is the current CEO of Consumer Reports. She joined the organization in 2014, following her work with the Ford Foundation, with the goal of expanding its engagement and advocacy efforts.
Consumer Reports' flagship website and magazine publishes reviews and comparisons of consumer products and services based on reporting and results from its in-house testing laboratory and survey research center. CR accepts no advertising, pays for all the products it tests, and as a nonprofit organization has no shareholders. It also publishes general and targeted product/service buying guides.
Advocacy and campaigns.
Consumer Reports has hundreds of thousands of online advocates who take action and write letters to policymakers about the issues its advocates take on. This group continues to grow as Consumer Reports expands its reach, with 6 million paid members who have access to online tools like a car recall tracker and personalized content. An additional base of online members join for free and received guidance on a range of products (e.g. gas grills, washing machines) at no charge. CR has also launched several advocacy websites, including HearUsNow.org, which helps consumers with telecommunications policy matters. In March 2005, CR campaign PrescriptionforChange.org released "Drugs I Need", an animated short with a song from the Austin Lounge Lizards, that was featured by "The New York Times", JibJab, BoingBoing, and hundreds of blogs. On Earth Day 2005, CR launched GreenerChoices.org, a web-based initiative meant to "inform, engage, and empower consumers about environmentally friendly products and practices".
Consumer Reports was a sponsor of the Safe Patient Project, whose goal was to help consumers find the best quality of health care by promoting the public disclosure of hospital-acquired infection rates and medical errors. The US Centers for Disease Control states that about 2 million patients annually (about 1 in 20) will acquire an infection while being treated in a hospital for an unrelated health care problem, resulting in 99,000 deaths and as much as $45 billion in excess hospital costs.
The campaign has worked in every state calling for legislation requiring hospitals to disclose infection rates to the public. The Safe Patient Project also works on medical devices, prescription drugs, and physician accountability.
GreenerChoices.org offers an "accessible, reliable, and practical source of information on buying 'greener' products that have minimal environmental impact and meet personal needs". The site contains many articles about different products, rating them on how "green" they are. It also focuses on electronics and appliance recycling and reuse, as well as conservation and global warming prevention.
Funding for Consumer Reports has recently been provided by USPIRG Education Fund, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center and the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network among other advocacy organizations.
In recent years, the organization has been vocal on key issues, including championing consumer choice and industry competition in the debate against the Sprint T-Mobile merger, advocating for consumer preference to leave net neutrality protections in place, exposing how data is used to engage in racial discrimination when determining consumer pricing offers, and advocating for stronger privacy laws in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Editorial independence.
"Consumer Reports" is well known for its policies on editorial independence, which it says are to "maintain our independence and impartiality ... [so that] CR has no agenda other than the interests of consumers". "CR" has unusually strict requirements and sometimes has taken extraordinary steps; for example it declined to renew a car dealership's bulk subscription because of "the appearance of an impropriety". However, "Consumer Reports" in 2021 took a $375,000 grant from an environmental group, the Climate Imperative Foundation, to examine gas stoves and indoor air quality, which resulted in the publication of an article entitled "Is Your Gas Range a Health Risk?" published on Oct. 4, 2022, with a note indicating that the article was funded in part by a grant from the Climate Imperative Foundation. This article appeared prior to an Oct. 25 memo by Consumer Products Safety Commission Commissioner Richard L. Trumka entitled 'Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Ban Gas Stoves'.
"Consumer Reports" does not allow outside advertising in the magazine, but its website has retailers' advertisements. "Consumer Reports" states that PriceGrabber places the ads and pays a percentage of referral fees to "CR", who has no direct relationship with the retailers. "Consumer Reports" publishes reviews of its business partner and recommends it in at least one case. "CR" had a similar relationship with BizRate at one time and has had relationships with other companies including Amazon.com, Yahoo!, "The Wall Street Journal", "The Washington Post", BillShrink, and Decide.com. "CR" also accepts grants from other organizations.
Consumer Reports says its secret shoppers purchase all tested products at retail prices on behalf of the organization, that they do so anonymously, and that CR accepts no free samples in order to limit bias from bribery and to prevent being given better than average samples. Consumer Reports pays a rental fee to manufacturers when using these press samples and does not include the products in its ratings. For most of "CR"'s history, it minimized contact with government and industry experts "to avoid compromising the independence of its judgment". In 2007, in response to errors in infant car seat testing, it began accepting advice from a wide range of experts on designing tests, but not on final assessments. Also, at times "CR" allows manufacturers to review and respond to criticism before publication. CR also accepts referral fees from websites such as Amazon for including "affiliate links" to websites where customers can purchase reviewed products.
Some objective and comparative tests published by "Consumer Reports" are carried out under the umbrella of the international consumer organization International Consumer Research &amp; Testing. "Consumer Reports" also uses outside labs for testing, including for 11 percent of tests in 2006.
Publications.
ConsumerReports.org, the website of Consumer Reports, is largely available only to paid subscribers. ConsumerReports.org provides updates on product availability, and adds new products to previously published test results. In addition, the online data includes coverage that is not published in the magazine; for example, vehicle reliability (frequency of repair) tables online extend over the full 10 model years reported in the Annual Questionnaires, whereas the magazine has only a six-year history of each model.
In 1990, Consumer Reports launched "Consumer Reports Television". By March 2005 it was "hosted" by over 100 stations.
On August 1, 2006, Consumer Reports launched "ShopSmart", a magazine aimed at young women.
In 2008, Consumer Reports acquired "The Consumerist" blog from Gawker Media.
Magazine copies distributed in Canada include a small four-page supplement called "Canada Extra", explaining how the magazine's findings apply to that country and lists the examined items available there.
In 1998, Consumer Reports launched the grant-funded project "Consumer Reports WebWatch", which aimed to improve the credibility of Web sites through investigative reporting, publicizing best-practices standards, and publishing a list of sites that comply with the standards. WebWatch worked with the Stanford Web Credibility Project, Harvard University's Berkman Center, The Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and others. WebWatch is a member of ICANN, the W3C and the Internet Society. Its content is free. As of July 31, 2009, WebWatch has been shut down, though the site is still available.
"Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs" is available free on Consumer Reports Health.org. It compares prescription drugs in over 20 major categories, such as heart disease, blood pressure and diabetes, and gives comparative ratings of effectiveness and costs, in reports and tables, in web pages and PDF documents, in summary and detailed form.
Also in 2005 Consumer Reports launched the service "Greener Choices", which is meant to "inform, engage, and empower consumers about environmentally-friendly products and practices". It contains information about conservation, electronics recycling and conservation with the goal or providing an "accessible, reliable, and practical source of information on buying "greener" products that have minimal environmental impact and meet personal needs".
Consumer Reports published a kids' version of "Consumer Reports" called "Penny Power", later changed to "Zillions". This publication was similar to "Consumer Reports" but served a younger audience. At its peak, the magazine covered close to 350,000 subscribers. It gave children financial advice for budgeting their allowances and saving for a big purchase, reviewed kid-oriented consumer products (e.g., toys, clothes, electronics, food, videogames, etc.), and generally promoted smart consumerism in kids and teens; testing of products came from kids of the age range a product was targeted toward. It also taught kids about deceitful marketing practices practiced by advertising agencies. The magazine folded in 2000.
Consumer Reports had an annual testing budget of approximately US$25 million, as well as approximately 7 million subscribers (3.8 million print and 3.2 million digital) as of April 2016.
The organization had around 6 million members in July 2018.
History.
Founding and early years.
In 1927, F.J. Schlink and Stuart Chase published their best selling novel, "Your Money's Worth", which saw massive readership due to the consumer movement. The demand for brand research led to Schlink to found the company "Consumers' Research" in 1927. The company was responsible for publishing Consumers’ Research Bulletin (previously named Consumer Club Commodity List). The subscriber count in 1933 was reported to be over 42,000. It was in this year, that Consumer Research moved its operations to New York City. Following this move, employees began to unionize, citing unfair pay. Schlink proceeded to fire the strikers. The former Consumers' Research employees, teamed up with "journalists, engineers, academics, and scientists" to found the company "Consumers Union"—now known as Consumer Reports—in February 1936. Consumers Union differentiated themselves from Consumers' Research by establishing a community amongst readers. Within the overall mission of creating more informed consumers, Consumers Union united with women's clubs and citizen groups, creating a progressive message. Consumers Union would surpass Schlink's Consumers' Research in subscribers by 1940, accumulating a readership of 71,000.
Resistance.
Numerous businesses and corporations set out to suppress the actions of Consumers Union. In an effort to suppress the critiques of Consumers' Union, The New York Herald Tribune established an institute with the goal of demonstrating that the efforts of consumers groups were futile, in that businesses already conducted extensive product-testing. The Crowell Institute on Consumer Relations founded in 1937, sprouted from the forum Woman's Home Companion, which had a readership of 2 million. The institute suppressed the efforts of consumer groups by giving business and advertisers the platform to putdown the consumers' pursuit of "lower distribution costs, grade labeling, and regulation," asserting that these businesses were already taking these factors into account. The New York Times proved to be an obstacle for Consumers Union, refusing CU's requests to advertise. Other major publications would follow suit.
In the year 1938, CU would find itself at the center of The Dies Committee's investigation into "unpatriotic propaganda". The committee brought on former member of Consumers' Research' board, J.B. Matthews as its research director. In Matthews' official report, he accused CU and its CEO Arthur Kallet of holding Communist ideals, and going as far as to label CU as "Communist front". The smear campaign was criticized by Consumers Union for its lack of legitimacy. The allegations proved fruitless, and rather served to delegitimize CR and Congressman Dies. In part due to actions of Consumers' Research, the House Un-American Activities Committee placed Consumers Union on a list of subversive organizations, only to remove it in 1954.
Role in consumer movement.
Consumers Union established themselves as an