Eat or heat?
No more ironing, limited oven use and showering at work—Europeans are trying to keep energy use down but the bills still keep climbing. Costs of energy for British consumers will rise by 80% from October,
Keetley
A household is defined as living in fuel poverty if it is low income and needs to spend 10% or even
2 . Dear boss — You have always tried to attract young consumers, and our consultants have always come up with new ways to label them. The trouble is that coming up with rules to define a group of humanity is more art than science. It is likely to become an exercise in applying stereotypes; not every youngster is drinking kombucha in a Brooklyn storehouse. Luckily you have me, and I’m here to tell you that much of what is written about marketing to today’s most prized consumers is a myth.
Start with the idea that, glued to smartphones, youngsters barely notice the physical world and passively follow the latest hit from Instagram or TikTok. It’s true that the days of marketing chiefly through television, newspapers and magazines are long gone. However, social media has not just changed the ways people discover brands; it has weakened the power of marketing as a whole. Online, talk is cheap and prices are readily Googled. Digital natives, therefore, can easily fact-check our suspicious marketing claims and ads. Surveys suggest that young Americans are among the most price-sensitive food shoppers, even though they have accumulated less wealth than earlier generations had by the same age.
There is a similar urge to think that physical shops no longer matter. Young consumers love their Amazon deliveries. It makes sense for our company to make sales via social media and ship directly to customers’ homes. But what works best is the close integration of the digital and physical worlds. Remember those online-only beauty brands like Glossier, which took the world by storm during the pandemic. It turns out that they struggle to get repeat business and have had to pair up with physical shops. What really matters is avoiding insincerity. Dishonesty is easily exposed online, where everyone loves a takedown. Remember the strong resistance to Boohoo, a fast-fashion firm, when it appointed Kourtney Kardashian, a celebrity leading a luxurious life, as a “sustainability ambassador”? And commit only to causes you can tangibly support and be frank when you are putting profits first. Anyway, nobody is perfect. To pretend otherwise is so 2013.
1. Why is there trouble with finding rules to define a group of people?| A．Because fixed ideas may be inappropriately employed. |
| B．Because not everybody is into drinking tea at a storehouse. |
| C．Because art is more challenging to learn than science. |
| D．Because the consultants are not as expert as the author. |
| A．To reveal their incompetence in saving money. |
| B．To illustrate they are sensitive to the prices of food online. |
| C．To demonstrate marketing has a great impact on their spending habits. |
| D．To prove they are not passive receivers of online marketing tricks. |
| A．Celebrities work as reliable ambassadors. |
| B．Young customers don’t visit physical shops. |
| C．Dishonesty in marketing was not rare in 2013. |
| D．Traditional media still play a major role in marketing. |
| A．How to Expand Youth Market: From Ideas to Practice |
| B．How to Sell to the Young: From Myth to Truth |
| C．How to Attract Young Customers: Honesty and Profits |
| D．How to Increase Sales Online: Labeling and Marketing |
3 . The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that offends our sense of justice. A business may maximize the amount of money it makes by damaging the environment and hurting people. When government regulation is effective, and the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and the public doesn’t care.
It is easy to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and they are under obligation to maximize profits for shareholders by legal means.
Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.
The public can do that by accusing businesses of harming them. The public may also make their opinion felt by choosing to buy sustainably harvested products; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.
In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease, transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a fast-food company made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers dropped, the meat industry followed immediately. The public’s task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure.
Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.
My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish. I believe that changes in public attitudes are essential for changes in businesses’ environmental practices.
1. The main idea of Paragraph 3 is that environmental damage__________.| A．is the result of ignorance of the public |
| B．requires political action if it is to be stopped |
| C．can be prevented by the action of ordinary people |
| D．can only be stopped by educating business leaders |
| A．reduce their own individual impact on the environment |
| B．learn more about the impact of business on the environment |
| C．raise awareness of the effects of specific environmental disasters |
| D．influence the environmental policies of businesses and governments |
| A．Meat packers stopped supplying hamburgers to fast-food chains. |
| B．Meat packers persuaded the government to reduce their expenses. |
| C．A fast-food company forced their meat suppliers to follow the law. |
| D．A fast-food company encouraged the government to introduce regulations. |
| A．Will the world survive the threat caused by big businesses? |
| B．How can big businesses be encouraged to be less driven by profit? |
| C．What environmental dangers are caused by the greed of businesses? |
| D．Are big businesses to blame for the damage they cause to the environment? |
Although failing
China-built stadiums, roads and many other Made-in-China products have won praise
In recent months, Luo Yang, a sales manager at the overseas business unit of Higer Bus Co, a bus and truck maker
These vehicles operated shuttle services for the thousands of fans, officials and journalists from different countries during the tournament,
“After the World Cup, the buses will be used to take children to and from school,” Luo said,
Market observers said the
With the World Cup successfully held in Qatar, “made in China” objects are having increasing presence in the biggest football celebration across the globe, with Chinese brands betting on sponsorship
Economic and trade ties between China and countries along the Belt and Road
Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers
China will also strengthen cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road in areas including poverty
7 . Some documents have been making the rounds lately — where people who work various positions in different industries share how much they’re paid.
Bravo! It’s about time we blew up that old belief that salaries have to stay secret. This is not just a matter of curiosity. Having information about salaries can help narrow the gender wage gap, which has barely changed for more than a decade. Recently released date from the US Census Bureau shows that, on average, women working full time still are paid only 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. And the gap is even wider for many women of color: Black women make 62 cents, and Latinas just 54 cents. What’s more, the pay gap even extends into her retirement. Because she earned less and therefore paid less to the social security system, she receives less in social security benefits.
Having greater access to salary information is helping to speed things up. A new research report by the American Association of University Women shows that the wage gap tends to be smaller in job sectors where pay transparency (透明) is a must. For example, among federal government workers, there’s just a 13 percent pay difference between men and women, and in state government, the gap is about 17 percent. But in private, for-profit companies, where salaries are generally kept under wraps, the gender wage gap jumps to 29 percent.
Fortunately, salary information is increasingly available on some websites. Certain companies and many human resources departments are pushing ahead with this practice. Of course, it’s going to take more than salary transparency to equalize earnings between women and men. But sharing salaries can and must be part of the solution. The more information women have about how jobs are valued — and what different people earn — the better they will understand their value in the labor market and be able to push for the pay they deserve.
1. Why are the figures mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To reveal the severity of gender wage gap. |
| B．To confirm the previous belief about salaries. |
| C．To satisfy readers’ curiosity about others’ salaries. |
| D．To appeal to readers to share their salary information. |
| A．The inequality between men and women. |
| B．The need to keep salary information a secret. |
| C．The advantage of working for the government. |
| D．The benefit of making salary information public. |
| A．Critical. | B．Favourable. |
| C．Unclean | D．Negative. |
| A．Why It Pays to Share How Much You Make |
| B．Where Salary Information Difference Lies |
| C．What It Takes to Realize Gender Equality |
| D．How Woman’s Value Improves at Work. |
Weifang, Shandong province, has been added to UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network as a Crafts and Folk Arts City, becoming the
Weifang has been integrating cultural creativity into resources promoting the city’s overall development. Taking the kite sector
An annual international kite festival that started in 1984 has become an international cultural and sports event and an important platform to promote international exchanges and cooperation.According to the
Demand on tourism burst as the Minsu market’s recovery sped up during the May Day holiday. Oceans of tourists flooded into Zibo in China’s Shandong Province for its BBQ,
The Minsu in rural areas still gain
Among customers booking the Minsu in rural areas, the “post-80” and “post-90” generations are still the mainstream. The
10 . Emerging (新兴的) economies struggled to grow through the 2010s and pessimism hangs over them now. People wonder how they will pay debts rung up during the Covid-19 pandemic and how they can grow rapidly as they did in the past.
The freshest answer is the fast-spreading digital revolution (革命). Emerging nations are adopting cutting-edge technology at a lower and lower cost, allowing them to fuel domestic demand and overcome traditional barriers to growth. Over the past decade, the number of smartphone owners has skyrocketed worldwide. The world’s emerging markets have already demonstrated the transformative effects of digital technology, which has saved the economy with old industries slowing sharply.
The digital revolution is as advanced in emerging economies as in developed ones. Among the top 30 nations by tax income from digital services as a share of GDP, 16 are in the emerging world. Since 2017, digital tax income has been growing in emerging countries at an average annual pace of 26%, compared with 11% in the developed ones.
How can it be that poorer nations are adopting digital technologies faster than the rich? One explanation is habit and its absence. In societies with plentiful physical stores and services, customers are often comfortable with and slow to abandon the providers they have. Nations lacking in schools, hospitals and banks will jump at the first digital option that comes along and quickly bridge these gaps by establishing online services.
Since 2010, the cost of starting a business has held steady in developed countries while falling sharply in emerging countries, from 66% to just 27% of the average annual income. Businessmen can now launch businesses affordably, organizing much of what they need on a smartphone.
It’s early days, too. Tech revolutions usually last a long time. Innovations like the car and the steam engine were still transforming economies half a century later. While the pandemic is weakening globalization, the age of rapid digitization has just begun. This offers many developing economies a revolutionary new path to catching up with the living standards of the developed world.
1. Where are people more willing to accept digital services?| A．In developed societies. |
| B．In overpopulated nations. |
| C．In economies with poor online services. |
| D．In countries short of basic public facilities. |
| A．They can pay less tax. |
| B．They make stable profits. |
| C．They do business at lower costs. |
| D．They enjoy a bigger share of the market. |
| A．To prove old inventions will finally go out of style. |
| B．To indicate digitization will have a long-term impact. |
| C．To explain innovations will take a long time to be adopted. |
| D．To imply developing countries will overtake developed ones. |
| A．The Global Economy Is Looking Up |
| B．Emerging Economies Struggle in the Pandemic |
| C．Digital Tech Saves the Declining Emerging Markets |
| D．Digital Service Is Progressing Slowly in Rich Countries |
