Buying Confidence

I just got the 2010 Consumer Reports Buying Guide - Best & Worst.  I was interested in what products are important enough (e.g. price, use, need, complexity etc.) to make the list.  Naturally most items are big ticket items - but here are the categories:
Home Entertainment - Bluray,DVD, Digital Cameras, Digital Frames, TV
Kitchen, Bath, Laundry - Countertops,Diswashers, Microwave, Ranges, Refrigs, Washer/Dryer, Toilets
Home & Yard - AC, Drills, Flooring, Grills, Mowers, Paints, Thermostats, Roofing, Vacuum
Computers, Phones, Peripherals - Cells, Computers, GPS, Monitors, Printers
Autos - Tire, New Cars, Old Cars

So about 31 products.  And how many times do you buy these same items?  I would guess in my 55 years I have purchased these items on average 6 times each (e.g. Cars-8 mine only; TVs - 15; DVD/VCR - 10 etc) - so almost 200 times.  SO WHAT?

Different people put so much time and effort into the buying decision (I'm one of those analysis/paralysis types).  Yet the average time we have the product is 3-4 years.  And who do you connect as the expert you talk to about each of these categories? --   Parents, Friends, Work Associates, etc.

We are so influenced by  (1) the person we last talked to (also known as "recentness weighting"),  (2) or our "perceived expert" (randomness of our relationships) we ask for advice (3) or our last experience (I'll never buy a Dell because of the lemon I had) (4) or our research on the web, consumer reports etc.

All of this is fairly random input creates a level of confidence in your decision - to assure you have optimized your "utility" for the cost.  I can guess I have made at least 50% of the wrong decisions in these 200 decisions..

So that qualifies me as and Expert in nearly every category :)