|
 Email this
 Print this
 Send comment
A
Yahoo! Most Popular Site
MakeLifeEasy Provides Your Custom Consumer Reports
Consumer's Union publishes Consumer Reports magazine,
an indispensable journal and the reference for research reports and testing on products.
MakeLifeEasy allows you to create, use, and share a new type of personal consumer report based
on your own purchasing and usage of products.
Consumer Reports magazine is published for a wide national audience.
Sometimes they perform general price comparisons, manufacturer reliability surveys, and the like.
But different stores and products are available in different neighborhoods.
And, although a certain store may offer "low prices overall",
they may not offer the lowest prices on the things you buy.
So it's useful for you to get specific price comparisons for the items you need to buy
from the stores available to you.
Also, Consumer Reports gathers and publishes overall manufacturer reliability data.
But, before you choose a certain make and model of a new asset (such as a television),
it would be nice to have data on others' experiences with that specific make and model.
MakeLifeEasy helps you collect this data and, in the near future, share it with other members.
Custom Reports Available Now
Here are reports that you can create in MakeLifeEasy for your own use right now.
For all of these, you start with a blank slate and enter data about your needs and purchases.
Soon, as our database grows, and if you want to participate, we'll share data between members.
1. Price Books and Buying Advice
The first screen shot shows a sample Price Book for deodorant
(the Price Book page is called "Asset History").
As you can see, the product price varies from store to store.
(We've changed the store names to protect the innocent, of course.)
This only has two items and is easy to read, but you can collect as many prices as you like.
But when you get lots of "data points", how can you make sense of them all?
You can either "eyeball" the data, and try to conclude something,
or you can look at the Buying Advice.
The second screen shot shows the Buying Advice for the same product.
This provides a useful summary of the Price Book,
including best and worst prices, best and worst sellers, and automatic buying advice.
There's a lot more to this;
for more info see
Buying Advice.
So which price books should you create? If you're only curious about one or two products,
just enter and track those products alone. If you want to track a group or a store-full of products,
enter them all for a period of time (the time period over which you want to run a comparison).
Since price books are also used as the basis of Seller Performance Reports (below),
the more assets you enter, the better seller comparisons you can get.
Let's say you're trying to determine which store offers you the best prices.
You can experiment by buying the same product at different stores over a trial period,
then compare the results.
You can do this for a single product or for everything you buy in a store.
|
2. Seller Performance Reports
The seller performance report takes all your individual price books and
rolls them together into a master analysis of seller performance: that is,
who gives you the best prices?
This is broken down by need (e.g. shampoo) and then summed up for all needs by store type
(e.g. health & beauty). That way, you can choose to shop at the one store that gives you
the lowest prices overall, or you can break up your needs and shop for some products at one store,
and for the others at another store.
|
3. Cost per Day Curve
Your Cost Per Day Curve is something new.
It goes beyond the typical "consumer report" to help you get your expenses in sync with your values.
It's definitely in the spirit of consumer reports, it's just more advanced.
For more info see
Cost Per Day Curve.
Coming Soon: Data Sharing
Soon, when you join our user community, you'll be able to share your data with others, if you want to.
All data sharing will be anonymous, unless you put your name in messages.
There's a goldmine of information you'll get from other members, including:
- Which stores in your area provide the lowest prices overall for the types of things you buy?
- How long do the things you want to buy really last? For example, how long before that Panasonic DVD player breaks down?
Longer than the Sony?
- How can you reduce your usage of items that cost you a lot? Do you use more than you need to?
You can learn from the other members in our community.
- We'll also feature members in your area who get the lowest prices for the week for certain items.
Get Started Now!
Our community members will agree to mutually share their data, or you can keep your data private.
To be a valuable member you'll need to have data to share, so start managing your assets now.
Click on the link below to join, and sign up for full membership.
Links
Email this
Print this
Send comment
|
|
