Consumer Products: Reviews and Buying Guides using Consumer Reports
Ever wonder if you are buying a product, such as a television or a car that might be faulty? It may be helpful to review Consumer Reports Buying Guide available from Magale Library. Consumer Reports Buying Guide is “a product-test and consumer advisory publication. Publishes results of tests on products ranging from major purchases such as automobiles & appliances to everyday items such as food & cleaning products. Also examines health, money management etc.”
Here is an example of Consumer Reports Buying Guide that might help. Let us say that we w
ant to learn about the quality of a used Chevrolet Silverado truck to determine if it is known to have any trouble areas in its performance.
First, we access Consumer Reports Buying Guide from the link below using the library’s AtoZ Full Text Finder.
Next, select “Search within this publication” to conduct a search for Chevrolet Silverado.
An EBSCOhost search interface should appear where you can type the name of the product, in this example, we use the search term: Chevrolet Silverado. Notice that the Full Text limiter has been selected.
Once the search is conducted, the results will appear. For this example, we selected the second entry.
Next, a Detailed Record appears providing an overview of the resource. In this example, there is a html and PDF Full Text format available to review the actual resource. We select the PDF option to review the full report.
In addition to searching for Consumer Reports using the above method, it might be helpful to browse vehicle reliability reports to vehicles’ reported problems. To do this, modify the search by removing Chevrolet Silverado and replacing it with: detailed used car reliability. Notice the results include several reports. In this example, we select the first result.
As before, a Detailed Record appears. Select the PDF Full Text option to review the full report.
The beginning of each Detailed Used Car Reliability report provides a description of how the data is collected and reported. The body of the report includes popular vehicle models’ reported problems using major categories and a rating system. Below is an example. To understand the markings, we will need to review the beginning of each report.
