'Amazon Effect': users adamant about research

Jeff Bezos must feel pretty good about this. The folks at UIE Brain Sparks report a tendency of e-commerce user test subjects to ask, before trying whatever site is the test object of the moment, if they can "try that at Amazon.com first."

But why? Is Amazon that much better on price? Features? Functionality? Reliability? Not necessarily:

The real cause of the Amazon Effect is research. Amazon has become the Consumer Reports of the Web. The primary reason people go to Amazon is to do product research. They trust what they find there and it heavily influences their purchasing decision. Some people we’ve tested claim that they go to Amazon and read the reviews there before every purchase they make. They want to be sure that what they’re buying has been positively reviewed.

I would adjust this to say Amazon has become the Consumer Reports alternative of the Web. CR has a robust site of its own, but it is subscription based in keeping with Consumers Union's revenue model (absolutely no advertising).

Perhaps not coincidentally, CR's Web site now features user-written reviews to supplement its own reports.

Now here's an interesting test idea, relevant to more than just one site: Try to understand how Amazon fans figure out which user reviews to trust, how many reviews it takes on a given product to convince them it's a clear consensus, and what content triggers suggest a particular review or user should be ignored.