Here's some anecdotal stuff, but it illustrates what I'm talking about. One of my first summer jobs was selling household appliances, including microwave ovens. This was back in the early eighties when Sharp came out with the "Carousel" feature and was highly rated by CR. People would come in and want the CR anointed Sharp Carousel. The US made Magic Chef was actually a better made oven, competitively priced under the Sharp and used a metal fan to redirect microwaves randomly from the magnetron tube so that there were no "cold spots" in the microwave, rather than just to spin the food on a platter through an oven with cold spots, but it was like pulling teeth to sell folks who had read the latest CR article on microwaves anything besides a Sharp.

I could point out how you lost the corners in the carousel and that you couldn't fit as much in, but if they had read CR it was often pointless - they were going to leave with a Sharp Carousel because CR endorsed it. So the owner stocked enough Sharp, but they made far less profit on it as Sharp jacked up their already higher prices after the favorable CR review. Eventually, the retailer had these little light bars that would light up when a microwave would hit them and one could show which ovens had cold spots and where they were, because the bulbs would not light up. One could show the Sharp was not better than the Magic Chef at cooking evenly, and in fact, the reverse was true. However, this whole effort was only needed after CR "anoints" a product as the "top rated" - and the masses believe it, even if their opinion is actually bogus. For all intents and purposes one had to "unsell" what CR had aleady sold them before they walked through the doors.

Most manufacturers had incentive programs, "spiffs", to compensate sales folk for pushing their product. Naturally, CR endorsed products seldom had high "spiffs" or after a favorable CR review, lowered spiffs since they felt they were now unnecessary.

Not surprisingly the Sharp was made in Japan. The Litton, Amana and Magic Chef brands (American) seldom, if ever, ranked as well as the Quasar, Sharp and other Japanese brands. I had an old Litton that lasted fifteen years before it's control panel circuit board finally gave out. Litton left the cooking game and went into defense electronics for awhile, but I don't think any of those US brands have survived, except perhaps Amana. Now most microwaves are probably made in China or Mexico. CR certainly didn't help those companies.

Yes, manufacturers can't use the CR endorsement in advertising but most retailers probably read each issue of CR with deep chagrin, as it often funnels customers to foreign products and almost always endorses products that have very low profit margins (since imports are almost always more expensive to buy for the seller). The little local entrepreneur wont have the buying power to sell imports at the same price as the national Wal-mart and eventually after a few years of being out-priced on imports and unable to sell enough of his domestic products, he folds up shop.

It's just anecdotal, but I'm sure my brief experience is multiplied many times over in all sorts of businesses.