1 . In many types of face-to-face retailing (零售), it pays to size up your customer and change your price accordingly. The Internet, by allowing nameless browsing and rapid price-comparing, was supposed to mean low and equal prices for all. Now, however, online retailers are being offered software that helps them detect shoppers who can afford to pay more or are in a hurry to buy, so as to present more expensive products to them or simply charge more for the same product.
Cookies stored in shoppers’ web browsers (浏览器) may show where else they have been looking, giving some clues as to their income and price-sensitivity. A shopper’s Internet address may be linked to his physical address, letting sellers offer, say, one price for a rich area, another for a poor area. Doug Bryan of iCrossing, a digital-marketing consultancy, explains that the most up-to-date “price customisation (定制化)” software can collate (对照) such clues with documents of individual shoppers that Internet sellers buy from online-data-aggregation firms. All this is fairly cheap, he says.
One of the few big online firms that admit to using such techniques is Orbitz, a travel website. Its software detects whether people browsing its site are using an Apple Mac or a Windows PC and, since it has found that Mac users tend to choose more expensive hotels, which are what it recommends to them. Orbitz stresses that it does not charge people different rates for the same rooms, but some online firms are believed to be doing just that, for example by charging full whack (份儿) for those who are willing and able to pay it, while offering discounts to the rest.
Allocating (配置) discounts with price-customisation software typically brings in two to four times as much money as offering the same discounts at random, claims Ravi Vijayaraghavan of [24]7, a Bangalore-based firm that develops and operates such software. One way to do this is to monitor how quickly shoppers click through towards the online seller’s payment page: those who already seem set on buying need not be attracted with a special offer.
Andrew Fano, a consultant in Accenture’s Chicago office, believes that at least six of America’s ten biggest web retailers are now customising prices in some way, but it is hard for shoppers to spot when this is going on. If they knew, many would feel that it is “pushing the boundaries” of fairness. Companies should be careful to escape the painful experience pioneered (率先做) by Amazon in the autumn of 2000. It was said that the Internet giant was selling DVDs at different prices, to see which browsers happened to be favored by shoppers least concerned about cost. The resulting backlash (激烈反应) prompted it to refund those who paid more.
Users of price-customisation software have so far been unwilling to monitor potential customers’ social media pages, for fear that this would cause a privacy backlash. But the operators at the call centres that [24]7 runs for its clients are beginning to scan Twitter for information on the shoppers they are talking to — and sometimes their tweets give useful clues about whether a discount is needed to make the sale.
1. According to Paragraph 1, online retailers are benefiting from _____.| A．knowing more about their customers |
| B．charging high prices for their goods |
| C．making their prices competitive |
| D．making price comparisons |
| A．locate customers’ addresses |
| B．guide customers to their products |
| C．create documents for old customers |
| D．judge customers’ purchasing power |
| A．practices price customisation successfully |
| B．gets into trouble for unfair pricing |
| C．pioneers the use of pricing software |
| D．finds out the browsers favoured most by shoppers |
| A．[24] 7 has occupied the market. |
| B．Social networks block pricing software. |
| C．Online retailers are afraid of causing angry reaction. |
| D．Social media users are not interested in discounts. |
| A．positive | B．negative |
| C．objective | D．unconcerned |
| A．Online price competition |
| B．Personalizing online prices |
| C．Problems of price facing online retailers |
| D．Online retailers’ pricing methods |
2 . According to the most recent census (人口普查) figures, nearly half of women between the ages of 15 and 44 don’t have children. Half of women is a lot of women, and yet, advertisers continue to behave as though they don’t exist. “The majority of marketing talks to adult women like they are all moms or want to be mothers,” Adrianna Bevilaqua, chief creative officer at M Booth, a public relations company, told The New York Times.
Industry experts explained to The Times that the absence of childless women in marketing materials is likely the result of inertia (惯性). Advertisers have long targeted moms because they buy their goods. In 2015, American moms were in charge of $3.4 trillion worth of spending decisions, which makes them the largest consumer group in the United States.
While they might not have the collective spending power of moms — many of whom, I suspect, would be very happy to give up some power of choosing laundry detergent (洗衣粉) in exchange for power of choosing something else with equal pay — childless women also have the potential to improve a business’ bottom line. One report has found that they spend twice as much on beauty products as women with children, and spend 60 percent more time abroad. The Times also notes that they spend 35 percent more on groceries than moms.
Of course, advertising has had a long time to adapt to the ongoing change in gender (性别) roles, and still, brands has made sexist ads that many find degrading (降低品格的). And even when brands do try to get with the times, as is the case with Dove and Pantene, many women still think them unpleasant. These critics are angry about the way such campaigns overstate female empowerment when, in reality, such empowerment is far from being fully realized.
Earlier this year, ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi researched moms’ understanding of their representation in advertising and found that they weren’t happy either. They surveyed nearly 8,000 women from around the world, the majority of whom responded with feelings of frustration (挫败) at the outdated mom images, including the busy mom and the saintly (神圣的) and perfectionist mom we so often see. Above all, they resented the view of motherhood as a job. “Motherhood is about being, not doing,” said Mary Mills, worldwide director of strategic intelligence from Saatchi & Saatchi, when describing the findings.
So as it turns out, both childless women and moms are motivated by the same desire. They want advertisers to let go of motherhood as an all-consuming identity for women and instead present them as the varied and unique beings they’ve long known themselves to be.
1. What can we learn from the passage?| A．Few American women do not want to have children. |
| B．Moms are happy because they are targeted by advertisers. |
| C．Moms were the largest consumer group in America in 2015. |
| D．Half of American women have no children according to the recent census figures. |
| A．Childless women spend mainly on beauty products and travel. |
| B．A report about women’s spending power has been produced. |
| C．Moms spend less on groceries than childless women. |
| D．Childless women’s spending power is not lower than that of moms. |
| A．Respected. | B．Hated. |
| C．Misunderstood. | D．Formed. |
| A．Moms’ representation in advertising has been researched by ad agencies. |
| B．Most American women want to be seen as unique beings. |
| C．Advertisers should pay attention to childless women. |
| D．Advertisers misunderstand moms’ images. |
