1. How much does the woman give the man again?
| A．￡5.5. | B．￡5.0. | C．￡0.5. |
| A．In a supermarket. | B．In a restaurant. | C．In a bar. |
2 . Danone Portugal introduced a new yogurt named Juntos. For every pack of yogurt that a person bought, he would donate yogurt to a family in need. Danone had done its research. Increasingly, people say they want to buy from brands that give them a sense of purpose. Surely a yogurt that helped the needy would be appealing. But Juntos was a failure. Despite sinking millions into a marketing campaign, Danone pulled Juntos from the market only months after it was launched. Now the same product is simply marketed as a tasty yogurt.
What happened? To find the reason behind Juntos’ failure, Lawrence Williams and his colleagues did an experiment where they showed people some products and asked these people to pick one option. They reminded some to focus on the “purposeful and valuable” aspect while others were told to “enjoy themselves” and focus on “delight and pleasure.” They found that participants who prioritized meaning preferred the less expensive product when compared with people who put pleasure in the first place.
So why were meaning-seekers cheaping out? Lawrence Williams asked participants to explain their decision-making to find out. He learned that meaning-oriented people were not thinking about how the product they might buy could bring meaning to their lives. Instead, they were occupied with what else they could do with their money.
I am all for people making wise and strategic financial choices. But cheap products can create many problems. Inexpensive options often do not last as long as the higher-end ones. As a result, we shop more often, which is ultimately worse for our wallets. Plus, that spending pattern can do a greater damage to the environment. Thanks in part to fast fashion, people buy 60 percent more clothing today than they did 15 years ago. The fashion industry alone emits more greenhouse gases than international flights and maritime (海洋的) shipping combined.
So before you dive into your wallet for some deals, try not to fix only on what you are spending or saving. Think carefully about what you are buying, too.
1. What is the main reason for the failure of Juntos?| A．It ignored marketing strategies. | B．It priced itself relatively high. |
| C．It lacked a particularly good taste. | D．It focused on delight and pleasure. |
| A．They frequent high-end stores. | B．They think products extend their lives. |
| C．They hesitate to make decisions. | D．They make more purchases with money. |
| A．By giving some examples. | B．By listing numbers and data. |
| C．By explaining reasons. | D．By making some comparisons. |
| A．Innovation: a Product’s Life | B．To Buy or not to Buy |
| C．Meaning seekers or Quality-pursuers | D．Fast Fashion: a Hit to Your Wallet |
3 . A study from 2010 said that raising prices by 1% without losing sales can increase profits by 8.7% on average. Getting the prices right can be difficult. Set them too high and you lose customers; set them too low and you leave money on the table.
To make more money, shopkeepers have been turning to price-optimization (优化) systems that predict how customers will respond to price changes. These systems are becoming cleverer thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI). While older systems used historical sales data to estimate (估计) price sensitivity for individual goods, the latest AI-powered systems can find relationships between multiple goods. These AI-powered systems use big data to estimate price sensitivity — how much demand increases as the price falls or how much demand decreases as the price goes up-for thousands of products. Price-sensitive (价格敏感的) goods can then be discounted and price-insensitive ones marked up.
All this makes pricing systems “much more three-dimensional”, observes Chad Yoes, the pricing official at Walmart, a supermarket. In February, Starbucks, a chain of coffee shops, expressed pride in its use of AI to price products “on an ongoing basis”. US Foods, a food company, says its pricing system can promote sales and profits.
Price-optimization may make prices change more. “Shopkeepers are pricing faster today than they ever have before,” says Matt Pavich of Revionics, a pricing-software firm. That is especially true in the fast-moving world of e-commerce. But even Walmart changes the prices of many items in its stores 2-4 times a year, says Mr Yoes. up from once or twice a few years ago.
Sysco, a food company, says the AI-powered system allows it to lower prices on “key value items” and raise prices on other products. It can thus increase profits by expanding sales while maintaining profits. That keeps investors content and shoppers sweet.
1. What can be learned from the first paragraph?| A．It is sometimes difficult to set the right prices. |
| B．Getting the prices right can make you lose customers. |
| C．Raising prices by 1% always leads to an 8.7% increase in profits. |
| D．The study from 2010 suggests that you leave money on the table. |
| A．They are more price-sensitive. |
| B．They make prices change more. |
| C．They can predict price sensitivity for individual goods. |
| D．They are able to identify links between various products. |
| A．Starbucks coffee. | B．Price-insensitive goods. |
| C．Walmart’s online goods. | D．Sysco’s “key value items”. |
| A．Apply AI to Set Prices | B．Raise Prices to Increase Profits |
| C．Reduce Prices to Promote Sales | D．Use AI to Predict Customer Response |
4 . Livestreaming (直播) through channels such as Amazon Live and QVC is an increasingly popular way to sell goods online. It usually lasts between 5 and 10 minutes, and someone promotes a product. Viewers can then readily buy it by clicking on a link.
We analyzed 99,451 sales cases on a livestream selling platform and matched them with actual sales cases. In terms of time, that is equal to over 2 million 30-second television advertisements.
To determine the emotional (情绪的) expression of the salesperson, we used two deep learning models: a face model and an emotion model. The face model discovers the presence or absence of a face in a frame (镜头) of a video stream. The emotion model then determines the probability that a face is exhibiting any of the six basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear or disgust. For example, smiling signals a high probability of happiness, while an off-putting expression usually points toward anger.
We wanted to see the effect of emotions expressed at different times in the sales cases so we counted probabilities for each emotion for all 62 million frames in our database. We then combined these probabilities with other possible aspects that might drive sales—such as price and product characteristics—to judge the effect of emotion.
We found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, when salespeople show more negative emotions-such as anger and disgust—the volume of sales went down. But we also found that a similar thing happened when the salespeople show high levels of positive emotions, such as happiness or surprise.
A likely explanation, based on our research, is that smiling can be unpleasant because it lacks true feelings and can reduce trust in the seller. A seller’s happiness may be taken as a sign that the seller is gaining interests at the customer’s expense.
1. What can we know about the livestreaming in the first paragraph?| A．It damages the physical economy. |
| B．It helps to sell the products abroad. |
| C．It helps big companies promote all goods. |
| D．It is very convenient for the buyers to buy goods. |
| A．By analyzing previous data. | B．By referring to a theory. |
| C．By giving some examples. | D．By concluding different views |
| A．Surprising. | B．Delighting. | C．Displeasing. | D．Embarrassing. |
| A．Livestreamers Sell Products Successfully |
| B．Expressions Affect Selling Products Online |
| C．Emotions and Faces: What’s the Difference |
| D．Smiling Can Increase the Sales in Reality |
5 . Have you ever been on social media and seen your favourite celebrity talking about a product? These endorsements—might not be totally random, and are actually seen as a vital part of the marketing process. The question is: How do social media influencers ‘influence’ what you buy?
Human desire for status and making friends, combined with our need to belong to a group, make us susceptible to being ‘socially influenced’. Companies often use that desire to have a similar lifestyle to a celebrity we admire to hawk or launch a product. So, what do these endorsements actually do?
Firstly, they can be used to build brand awareness. A social media influencer should have a strong understanding of the platform they operate on, and therefore can create engaging content that not only adheres to the brand image, but sparks their followers’ interests in a product they might never have seen before.
Secondly, influencers can improve a company or product’s relationship with their customer base. According to In Moment’s 2018 US Retail CX Trends Report on customer loyalty, 77% of buyers have been brand loyal for more than ten years. This is also true of 60% of millennials. popular celebrity can target key demographics and talk or blog about a product, which can create an instant and lasting bond with the consumer.
Lastly, influencers can improve customer buying habits with seemingly ‘unbiased opinions’. We are more likely to respond to ‘peer recommendation’ than traditional ads, meaning the fact we see an influencer as a ‘friend’ can make us less likely to be sceptical about what we are seeing.
So, the next time you see a celebrity talking about a product, you might want to consider that this could be a carefully crafted marketing strategy designed to target your core needs. If you find yourself perusing a product you’ve seen on social media, you may well have been influenced.
1. Why can social influencers make such engaging content? Because they ________.| A．are internet celebrities |
| B．know how to use the platform they are working on. |
| C．have used the products themselves |
| D．are involved in the making of the products |
| A．Being independent | B．Making friends |
| C．Belonging to a group. | D．Human desire for status |
| A．We are not much influenced. |
| B．We believe everything they say. |
| C．We are less doubtful about adverts we are seeing. |
| D．We want to make friends with them. |
| A．It is exactly what I need. |
| B．We don’t need it at all. |
| C．There’s more to learn about the celebrity. |
| D．Our essential needs are being targeted. |
6 . A brand is a name, word, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of a company or a group of companies. Another purpose of a brand is to contrast one company from another. The most important skill of professional marketers is the ability to create, maintain, protect, and enhance the brands of their products and services. Branding has become so important that today hardly any company or product is without one. Therefore, brand management is an increasingly important element in marketing.
Brand power refers to the relative strength of a company’s brand in the minds of consumers, and can influence consumers’ choice of products. Brands are powerful to the extent that they give high brand loyalty and strong brand associations, name recognition, perceived quality and other assets to a company. A strong brand can be one of a company’s most important assets.
High brand power provides a company with many competitive advantages. A powerful brand enjoys a high level of consumer brand awareness and loyalty. Because consumers expect stores to carry the brand, the company has more bargaining power when negotiating with retailers (零售商). And because the brand name brings high credibility, a company with a strong brand can more easily launch new products with the same brand name.
Many companies use the advantage of a strong brand power strategically to expand their business. When a company introduces an additional item with a new flavour, form, colour or package size in a given product category and under the same brand name, it is called a line extension. Another strategy is called brand extension. This involves the use of a successful brand name to launch new or modified products in a new category, thereby employing brand recognition in order to increase sales of new products.
Brand recognition is certainly important. Because consumers often hold long-standing perceptions about brands, high brand power ensure a company continued sales of its products.
1. What does the word “assets” in the 2nd paragraph mean?
| A．points | B．advantages | C．aspects | D．elements |
| A．a high brand wins the loyalty of consumers |
| B．a high brand usually sets a much higher price |
| C．it’s easy for a high brand company to launch new products |
| D．a high brand company is more competitive when doing business with retailers |
| A．happens when the company is developing a new product |
| B．means the expansion of a company’s business in its established field |
| C．takes place when the company introduces a similar item but with a new colour |
| D．refers to the use of an established brand name to promote a new product in a new category |
| A．Brand Power | B．Famous Brands |
| C．Company Brands | D．Brand Products |
7 . Store owners have been inventing new tricks to get consumers into their stores and purchasing their goods. Even as we find new strategies to resist, neuroscientists (神经科学家) are employed at marketing agencies across the country to best figure out what is going through a consumer’s brain at each point in the decision process.
We consumers overspend due to the fact that we have a fear of missing the really good deal or having to pay more for the same thing and lose money. Normally, the prefrontal cortex ( 前 额皮 层 ) controls our emotional reactions to things, and keeps us from acting unreasonably by calming down our fears. But an advertiser can disturb our prefrontal cortex just by displaying flashy deal signs, encouraging it to do math on how much money we might save now by buying more of something we don’t actually need yet.
Nostalgia, that regretful affection for past events, is another strong influencer during the holiday season, and it’s shaped by emotion. Emotion—whether good or bad—enhances the formation of memories, engaging more parts of the brain. So hearing a nephew singing a carol, for instance, might reawaken memories associated with that particular song in a much more powerful way than hearing that same nephew sing another song. These kinds of memories are brought back even more easily by sensory input. This might be why we are often greeted by a sensory reminder everywhere we go in a month.
Wherever you purchase gifts, there are social influences on what you buy as well. The holidays are a time when we are especially conditioned to pay more for the label because we’re buying gifts. Receiving a brand-name gift sends the message that “this person has spent more on me, so he or she must value me more.” And it makes sense. If two things seem pretty much the same, how do I know which to choose? Humans have survived as a social species, and we have to rely on each other. So when our brains are trying to make decisions, one of the shortcuts is to assume that if a lot of other people prefer something (and higher cost is often a predictor of that), then there must be a reason.
Much of our holiday spending is driven by unplanned purchases. Plan ahead, resist the urge to purchase in the moment, make notes for comparison shopping, and if the deal is actually good, then it will hold up to inspection and you’ll feel good about your purchases later. Before you blow your budget this season, remember that your brain might be fooling you into that next purchase.
1. From Paragraph 2, we learn that ______.| A．the prefrontal cortex is the calculation center |
| B．the common consumers always act unreasonably |
| C．the sight of flashy deal signs may fill consumers with fear |
| D．the advertisers make consumers pay more for the same thing |
| A．Creating a festival atmosphere. | B．Following the current fashion. |
| C．Preparing more free samples. | D．Offering a bigger discount. |
| A．They are more reliable. | B．They are a sign of social status. |
| C．They make people feel valued. | D．They are favored by most people. |
| A．buy in the moment | B．reduce our budget |
| C．return unnecessary products | D．make a plan in advance |
Susu: Good to see you! It’s been a while since I last saw you.
Zhouzhou: Good to see you too. You look lovely in that dress. Where did you get it?
Susu: I got it online. You know online shopping is quite popular these days.
Zhouzhou: I know. But my friends still prefer to shop in real stores.
Susu: It seems people have different opinions.
Zhouzhou: What do you think?
Susu: I think online shopping is just great. There are thousands of shops and they never close.
Zhouzhou: But in real stores, you can talk to the salespeople and ask questions about the products.
Susu: Well, I think the salespeople always talk too much. Besides, the same thing often costs less online.
Zhouzhou: The product may be cheaper, yet sometimes you have to pay more for the delivery.
[写作内容]
1. 用约30个词概括上述信息的主要内容。
2. 你更愿意在网上购物还是在实体店购物？请说明理由(不少于两点)。
[写作要求]
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句。
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称。
3. 不必写标题。
[评分标准]
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
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9 . iPads vs Textbooks
What if you could have your whole backpack at the touch of your fingertips? In the first month of the Apple iPads release, 25million were sold! People all over the world use iPads for all sorts of different things, but one of their finest qualities is the ability to be a textbook.
To begin with, iPads are less expensive. Textbooks become outdated and schools have to buy new books, but with an iPad schools can update them for free.
Third, schools should get rid of their textbooks and get iPads because they have more capabilities. Some might think all of the apps are distracting, but the apps actually make iPads more efficient.
Lastly, iPads are a better choice for schools instead of textbooks because these devices allow students to access their learning anywhere at any time.
In conclusion, schools should get rid of their clumsy textbooks and switch to iPads. iPads have allowed this generation to have their entire backpack in the palm of their hands.
| A．Second, iPads cost less and are more popular. |
| B．These tablets are perfect for busy students. |
| C．Therefore, they can use the saved money for other programs. |
| D．Moreover, in high school, textbooks have an average of 4.8 pounds each. |
| E．iPads have already replaced textbooks in over 600 American counties. |
| F．Schools have every reason to do away with their school books and switch to iPads. |
| G．iPads absorb the need to buy calculators, dictionaries, and other items that are found within the device. |
