I genuinely can't tell if this is satire or not. Assuming it's not, unless your "own research" consists of actually buying a wide swath of competing products a

I genuinely can't tell if this is satire or not. Assuming it's not, unless your "own research" consists of actually buying a wide swath of competing products and testing them against each other, then at some point you are indeed relying on "influencers", whether those influencers are Consumer Reports, Amazon reviews, your parents/neighbors/friends, etc.