Consumer Power

The free communication of function, quality and price is a prerequisite for a free market. Knowledge of price options by consumers is what drives the market to produce efficiently and provide the highest quality products at the lowest price. Knowledge of price tells businesses where to invest to fulfill a market demand. Hence, any shortage is transient and new products quickly appear to fill the needs of a changing world.

Prices are advertised by the lower cost producers or their sales agents. Consumers are inundated with price information. Information about product quality is not so readily available. Consumers Report makes product quality information readily available.

Given the consistent failure of planned economies in which the price is set by government bureaucrats, even Socialists, Fascists, bureaucrats and other authoritarian acknowledge the value of free market price information. However, they often justify business regulation on the presumption that consumers cannot be fully informed of bad business behavior, particularly when the business can simply move to avoid its responsibilities and find virgin consumers. Consumers Report eliminates that justification by providing a forum for consumers to share their good and bad business and product experiences with others, regardless of geography.

Perhaps now we can have a truly free market.