2014年雅思阅读模拟试题实战训练题：How to increase sales

雅思阅读模拟试题实战训练题：How to increase sales

Published online: Nov 9th 2006

From The Economist print edition

How shops can exploit people's herd mentality to increase sales

1.A TRIP to the supermarket may not seem like an exercise in psychological warfare—but it keepers know that filling a store with the aroma of freshly baked bread makes people feel hungry and persuades them to buy more food than they had king the most expensive products at eye level makes them sell faster than cheaper but less visible researchers are investigating how “swarm intelligence” (that is，how ants，bees or any social animal，including humans，behave in a crowd) can be used to influence what people buy.

a recent conference on the simulation of adaptive behaviour in Rome，Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani，a computer scientist from the Florida Institute of Technology，described a new way to increase impulse buying using this rmarkets already encourage shoppers to buy things they did not realise they wanted: for instance，by placing everyday items such as milk and eggs at the back of the store，forcing shoppers to walk past other tempting goods to reach Usmani and Ronaldo Menezes，also of the Florida Institute of Technology，set out to enhance this tendency to buy more by playing on the herd idea is that，if a certain product is seen to be popular，shoppers are likely to choose it challenge is to keep customers informed about what others are buying.

r smart-cart Mr Usmani's supermarket every product has a radio frequency identification tag，a sort of barcode that uses radio waves to transmit information，and every trolley has a scanner that reads this information and relays it to a central a customer walks past a shelf of goods，a screen on the shelf tells him how many people currently in the shop have chosen that particular the number is high，he is more likely to select it too.

Usmani's “swarm-moves” model appeals to supermarkets because it increases sales without the need to give people it gives shoppers the satisfaction of knowing that they bought the “right” product—that is，the one everyone else model has not yet been tested widely in the real world，mainly because radio frequency identification technology is new and has only been installed experimentally in some Mr Usmani says that both Wal-Mart in America and Tesco in Britain are interested in his work，and testing will get under way in the spring.

her recent study on the power of social influence indicates that sales could，indeed，be boosted in this hew Salganik of Columbia University in New York and his colleagues have described creating an artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown researchers found that when people could see the songs ranked by how many times they had been downloaded，they followed the the songs were not ordered by rank，but the number of times they had been downloaded was displayed，the effect of social influence was still there but was less le thus follow the herd when it is easy for them to do so.

Japan a chain of convenience shops called RanKing RanQueen has been ordering its products according to sales data from department stores and research shops sell only the most popular items in each product category，and the rankings are updated ystem，a company in Cambridge，Massachusetts，also aims to exploit knowledge of social networking to improve sales.

the psychology that works in physical stores is just as potent on the ne retailers such as Amazon are adept at telling shoppers which products are popular with like-minded in the privacy of your home，you can still be part of the swarm.

　Questions 1-6

Complete the sentences below with words taken from the reading passage. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

owners realize that the smell of _______________ can increase sales of food products.

shops, products shelved at a more visible level sell better even if they are more _______________.

rding to Mr. Usmani, with the use of “swarm intelligence” phenomenon, a new method can be applied to encourage _______________.

the way to everyday items at the back of the store, shoppers might be tempted to buy _______________.

the number of buyers shown on the _______________ is high, other customers tend to follow them.

g the “swarm-moves” model, shopowners do not have to give customers _______________ to increase sales.

　　Questions 7-12