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Reading Passage 1:
Why good ideas fail
As part of a marketing course, two marketing experts comment on a hypothetical case study involving TF, a
fiction retail giant specializing in home furnishing. The experts give concrete solutions and advice to assist
students.
Hypothetical case study:
A. TF became a retail success in the 1970s when it succeeded in spotting homeware trends and meeting the
needs of its then trendy young customers. However; by 2004, the IF stores were failing and a rethink was
clearly necessary. Tibal Fisher, TF’s founder and CEO, decided to change its focus under the new brand
name of TVs Nextstage. His aim was to recapture the now ageing customers that had given him his early
success and target consumers aged 60+ with devices and gadgets specifically designed to assist them
with the problems associated with ageing: mobile phones with screens that were easy to read; kitchen
gadgets with comfortable grips; electronic devices that were easy to set and adjust. TF’s market research
proved to be very positive, showing strong consumer support for the products
B. In 2007, the stores were remodelled at a cost of US $40 million and the new brand was launched. Each store
was made more comfortable and featured a coffee shop to help increase traffic – Tibal had predicted that if
they could get customers into the stores then the products would sell themselves. However, by 2009 it was
clear that the idea was a failure and the stores consistently remained empty. Customers complained that
the new stores felt like a senior center and reminded them that they were growing old.
Feedback from expert
Expert 1: Donna Sturgess, global head of innovation, GlaxoSmithKline
[Link] Team’s customer research efforts are a classic case of missing the subconscious associations at work
in consumers’ minds. Tibal and his executives looked only at surface attitudes. Since those attitudes make
up a relatively small part of the total consumer response, the executives are clueless about the reason for
the poor sales. It’s critical for companies to understand that every customer relates to a brand emotionally,
and it’s those emotions that trigger - or block - purchases
[Link]’s why we’ve focused on using emotional strategies behind branding for a number of years now. A great
example Is Alli (pronounced ‘ally’), a drug to aid weight loss. The product deals with a highly emotional
issue, so in marketing it, we faced the same challenge that the new TF stores are facing: the very thought
of buying the product reminds customers that they have problems they feel negatively. In the case of TF’s
Nextstage, the problems are age and infirmity. In the case of Alli, the problems are excessive weight and all
consequences. There’s always a risk that consumers’ negative feelings will discourage them from starting
or staying on a diet. So, after extensive market research, we took a number of steps to inject emotions into
the whole process of using the product.
E. First, we came up with a name that sounds like a helpful partner. We also aimed to make the container both
beautiful and functional – something that didn’t just hold pills but could later be used to store diet guides
and recipes. Traditional market research is unlikely to uncover Ideas like this, so we use a wide variety of
techniques. Even simple techniques such as one-on-one interviews, or ethnographical observation that
involves going into people’s houses to examine their behaviour, can provide valuable data.
Expert 2: Alex Lee, president of 0X0 International, maker of 0X0 Good Grips household products
F. This retailer can get back on track by remembering a principle that applies to consumers In general and
those aged 60+ in particular: they’re attracted by brands they associate with the type of people they’d like
to be - not the type they really are. That’s why marketing campaigns for surf gear feature surfers, not the
city dwellers who will wear the products while doing their shopping
G.I was reminded of this principle few years ago when we wanted to find out how far we could apply our design
philosophy of makings things easier to use in order to move from our core business, kitchen tools, into
other products. We conducted what are known as focus groups, where participants were asked to look at
photos of people and pick those who are perceived to be users and nonusers of our products. Consistently
they picked people who looked fit as the sort who would use our products, and people who look old and
boring as the sort who wouldn’t. Yet the participants, all owners of our products, looked a lot more like the
later than the former.
[Link] the needs of elderly users and those with deteriorating vision or dexterity are very much taken into
consideration when we develop new designs, we try to offer that appeal to 20- and 30-year-olds. We
believe that referring to these products as helping tools would serve only to harm the brand in our
customers’ eyes. That’s why our philosophy of universal design, which involves creating products that are
comfortably useable by the largest possible range of people, is never explicitly stated as part of our
marketing position.
I. We’ve found that market research does not need to be very sophisticated. For instance, we have conducted
simple surveys in the lobby of our building offering free products in exchange for people’s opinions. Some
may call this unscientific but we have uncovered great insights this way. Sometimes the most important
signals come from an executive’s own instincts. In Tibal fisher’s case, this could have told him what his
surveys and focus groups didn’t: 60-plus-year-olds won’t support a business that expects them to act their
age.
Questions 1—5
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1 The TF Nextstage stores planned to sell products to make life easier for older people
2 TF’s market research indicated that people liked the products.
3 It cost more than expected to remodel the TF stores.
4 The TF Nextstage coffee shops sold their own brand of food and drink.
5 TF Nextstage customers liked the atmosphere in the new stores:
Questions 6 -13: Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
Feedback from experts
Donna Sturgess
Problems with customer research:
• TF team limited their research to attitudes that occur at a 6 __________ level in customers’ minds
• TF didn’t consider customers’ emotions
How my company dealt with a similar problem:
• Product: Alli
• Use: help people achieve 7__________
• Marketing aim: help customers see the product a positive way by:
- Giving the product a 8__________ that seems helpful and supportive
- Giving the product a reusable 9__________
Market research
• Does not need to be complex
• Good information can come from interviews or studying the 10__________ of consumers in the
home
Alex Lee
Problem:
• Customers are attracted to the ideal not the reality, e.g., ads for surf gear
How my company dealt with a similar problem:
• We organised 11__________ to find out what images customers associate with our products
• We do not call our products helping tools in our marketing campaigns
Market research:
• Can be basic, e.g., by doing 12__________
• Company executives should follow their 13__________
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-28, which are based on Reading Passage 2,
Keeping the water away
New approaches to flood control
A. Recently, winter floods on the rivers of central Europe have been among the worst for 600 to 700 years,
and dams and dykes (protective sea walls) have failed to solve the problem. Traditionally, river engineers
have tried to get rid of the water quickly, draining it off the land and down to the sea in rivers reengineered
as high-performance drains. But however high they build the artificial riverbanks, the floods keep coming
back. And when they come, they seem to be worse than ever.
B. Engineers are now turning to a different plan: to sap the water’s destructive strength by dispersing it into
fields; forgotten lakes and floods plains. They are reviving river bends and marshes to curb the flow, and
even plugging city drains to encourage floodwater to use other means to go underground. Back in the
days when rivers took a winding path to the sea, floodwaters lost force and volume while meandering
across flood plains and inland deltas, but today the water tends to have a direct passage to the sea. This
means that, when it rains in the uplands, the water comes down all at once.
C. Worse, when the flood plains are closed off, the river’s flow downstream becomes more violent and
uncontrollable; by turning complex river systems into the simple mechanics of a water pipe, engineers
have often created danger where they promised safety. The Rhine, Europe’s most engineered river; is a
good example. For a long time, engineers have erased its backwaters and cut it off from its plain. The aim
was partly to improve navigation, and partly to speed floodwaters out of Alps and down to the North Sea.
Now, when it rains in the Alps, the peak flows from several branches of the Rhine coincide where once
they arrived separately, and with four-fifths of the Lower Rhine’s flood plain barricaded off, the waters
rise. The result is more frequent flooding and greater damage. The same thing has happened in the US
on the Mississippi river, which drains the world’s second largest river catchment into the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite some $7 billion spent over the last century on levees (embankments) the situation is growing
worse.
D. Specialists in water control now say that a new approach is needed - one which takes the whole
landscape into consideration. To help keep London’s feet dry, the UK Environment Agency is reflooding
10 square kilometres of the ancient flood plain of the River Thames outside Oxford. Nearer to London, it
has spent £100 million creating new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres of flood plain.
Similar ideas ate being tested in Austria, in one of Europe’s largest river restorations to date. The
engineers calculate that the restored flood plain of the Drava River can now store up to 10 million cubic
metres of floodwater, and slow down storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an hour,
protecting towns not only in Austria, but as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.
E. The Dutch, for whom preventing floods is a matter of survival, have gone furthest. This nation, built
largely on drained marshes and seabed, has had several severe shocks in the last two decades, when
very large numbers of people have had to be evacuated. Since that time, the Dutch have broken one of
their most enduring national stereotypes by allowing engineers to punch holes in dykes. They plan to
return up to a sixth of the country to its former waterlogged state in order to better protect the rest.
F. Water use in cities also needs to change. At the moment, cities seem to create floods; they are concreted
and paved so that rains flow quickly into rivers. A new breed of ‘soft engineers’ wants cities to porous.
Berlin is one place where this is being done. Tough new rules for new developments mean that drains will
be prevented from becoming overloaded after heavy rains. Architects of new urban buildings are diverting
rainwater from the roofs for use in toilets and the irrigation of roof gardens, while water falling onto the
ground is collected in ponds, or passes underground through porous paving. One high-tech urban
development can store a sixth of its annual rainfall, and reuse most of the rest
G. Could this be expanded to protect a whole city? The test case could Los Angeles. With non-porous
surfaces covering 70% of the city, drainage is a huge challenge. Billions of dollars have been spent
digging huge drains and concreting riverbeds, but many communities still flood regularly. Meanwhile, this
desert city ships water from hundreds of kilometres away to fill its taps and swimming pool. Los Angeles
has recently launched a new scheme to utilise floodwater in the Sun Valley section of the city. The plan is
to catch the rain that falls on thousands of driveways, parking lots and rooftops in the valley. Trees will
soak up water from parking lots; houses and public buildings will capture roof water to irrigate gardens
and parks, and road drains will empty into old gravel pits to recharge the city’s underground water
reserves. Result: less flooding and more water for the city. It may sound expensive, until we realise how
much is spent trying to drain cities and protect areas from flooding, and how little this method achieves.
Questions 14-19: Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the
following information?
14 how legislation has forced building designers to improve water use
15 two reasons why one river was isolated from its flood plain
16 how natural water courses in the past assisted flood control
17 an example of flood control on one river, affecting three countries
18 a country which has partly destroyed one of its most typical features in order to control water
19 the writer’s comment on the effectiveness of traditional flood control and newer methods
Questions 20 and 21: Choose TWO letters A-E.
According to the article, which TWO of these statements are true of the new approach to flood control?
A. It aims to slow the movement of water.
B. It aims to channel water more directly into rivers.
C. It will cost more than twice as much as former measures.
D. It will involve the loss of some areas of land.
E. It has been tested only in The Netherlands.
Questions 22-26: Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the
passage for each answer.
22 Some of the most severe floods for many centuries have recently occurred in ___________.
23 The Rhine and the ___________ rivers have experienced similar problems with water control.
24 An area near Oxford will flooded to protect the city of ___________.
25 Planners who wish to allow water to pass more freely through city surfaces are called ___________.
26 A proposal for part of the city of ___________ could show whether small-scale water projects could
apply on a large scale.
READING PASSAGE 3
Australia’s Megafauna Controversy
A. Over the past 50 millennia, Australia has witnessed the extinction of many species of large animals, including
a rhinoceros-sized wombat and goannas the size of crocodiles. Debate about the possible cause of these
extinctions has continued for more than 150 years and one the crucial questions raised is how long
humans and megafauna coexisted in Australia. We need to know the overlap of time to make an informed
choice between the two main theories regarding the causes of these extinctions. If humans and megafauna
coexisted for a protracted period then climate change is the more likely cause. However, if the megafauna
became extinct shortly after the arrival of humans, then humans are the likely culprits
B. The archaeological site at Cuddie Springs in eastern Australia appears to be well preserved. This dusty
claypan holds within its sediments a rich cache of flaked stone and seed-grinding tools, and side by side
with these clear signals of human culture are the bones of a dozen or more species of megafauna. Drs
Judith Field and Stephen Wroe of the University of Sydney, who excavated the site, claim that it provides
unequivocal evidence of a long overlap of humans and megafauna, and conclude that aridity leading up to
the last Ice Age brought about their eventual demise. In the long-standing explanation of this site, artefacts
such as stone tools and extinct animals remain were deposited over many thousands of years in an
ephemeral lake- a body of water existing for a relatively short time – and remained in place and
undisturbed until the present day.
[Link] is no disputing the close association of bones and stones at Cuddie Springs, as both are found 1 to
1.7 metres below the modern surface. The dating of these layers is accurate: ages for the sediments were
obtained through radiocarbon dating of charcoal fragments and luminescence dating of sand grains from
the same levels (revealing when a sample was last exposed to sunlight). Intriguingly, some of the stone
show surface features indicating their use for processing plants, and a few even have well-preserved blood
and hair residues suggesting they were used in butchering animals.
[Link] is the case proposed by Field aside Wroe clear-cut? We carried out a reanalyse of the scientific data
from Cuddie Springs that brings into question their conclusions. The amount of anthropological evidence
found at the site is remarkable: we estimate there are more than 3 tonnes of charcoal and more than 300
tonnes of stone buried there. Field and Wroe estimate that there are approximately 20 million artefacts.
This plethora of tools is hard to reconcile with a site that was only available for occupation when the lake
was dry. Furthermore, no cultural features such as oven pits have been discovered. If the sediment layers
have remained undisturbed since being laid down, as Field and Wroe contend, then the ages of those
sediments should increase with depth. However, our analysis revealed a number of inconsistencies.
E. First, the charcoal samples are all roughly 36,000 years old. Second, sand in the two upper levels is
considerably younger than charcoal from the same levels. Third, Field and Wroe say that the tools and
seed-grinding stones used for plant and animal processing are ancient, yet they are very similar to
implements found elsewhere that were in use only a few thousand years ago. Also interesting is the fact
that a deep drill core made a mere 60 metres from the site recovered no stone artefact or fossil bones
whatsoever. These points suggest strongly that the sediments have been moved about and some of the old
charcoal has been re-deposited in younger layers. Indeed, one sample of cow bone found 1 metre below
the surface came from sediments where charcoal dated at 6,000 and 23,000 years old is mixed with
17,000-year-old sand. The megafauna bones themselves have not yet dated, although new technological
developments make this a possibility in the near future.
F. We propose that the archaeologists have actually been sampling the debris carried by ancient flood channels
beneath the site, including charcoal transported from bushfires that intermittently occurred within the
catchment. Flood events more likely explain the accumulation of megafauna remains, and could have
mixed old bones with fresh deposits. European graziers also disturbed the site in 1876 by constructing a
well to provide water their cattle. Given the expense of well-digging, we speculate that the graziers made
sure it was protected from the damage caused by cattle hooves by lining the surface with small stones
collected from further afield, including prehistoric quarries. This idea is consistent with the thin layer of
stones spread over a large area, with cattle occasionally breaking through the gravel surface and forcing
the stone and even cattle bones deeper into the waterlogged soil.
[Link] lack of conclusive evidence that humans and megafauna coexisted for a lengthy period casts doubt on
Field and Wroe’s assertion that climate change was responsible for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna.
However, we do not suggest that newly arrived, well-armed hunters systematically slaughtered all the large
beasts they encountered. Recent studies based on the biology of modern-day large mammals, combined
with observations of people who still practice a traditional hunter gatherer lifestyle, reveal an unexpected
paradox and suggest a further possible explanation as to what happened. Using a mathematical model, it
was found that a group of 10 people killing only one juvenile Diprotodon each year would be sufficient to
bring about the extinction of that species within 1,000 years. This suggests that here, as in other parts of
the word, the arrival of humans in lands previously inhabited only by animals created a volatile combination
in which large animals fared badly.
Questions 27-30
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
27 Field and Wroe argue that findings at the Cuddie Springs site show that people lived in this area at
the same time as megafauna.
28 Field and Wroe believe it is likely that smaller megafauna species survived the last Ice Age
29 The writers believe that the dating of earth up to 1.7m below the present surface at Cuddie Springs
is unreliable.
30 Some artefacts found at Cuddie Springs were preserved well enough to reveal their function
Questions 31-35: Complete the summary using the list of words, A-l, below
The writers’ arguments against Field and Wroe’s analysis of the scientific data from Cuddie Springs
One objection to Field and Wroe’s interpretation is the large quantity of charcoal, 31 _________ and
artefacts found at Cuddie Springs. Such large numbers of artefacts would be impossible if the area had been
covered with 32_________ for a period. There is also a complete lack of man-made structures, for instance
those used for 33_________. Other evidence that casts doubt on Field and Wroe’s claim is the fact that
while some material in the highest levels of sediment is 36,000 years old, the 34_________ in the same
levels is much more recent. The tools used to process plants and animals may also be newer than Field and
Wroe believe. Further evidence against human occupation of the area is the absence of tools and
35_________ a short distance away.
A seeds B stone C sand D cooking
E deep drill core F water G fossil bones H sediment I storage
Questions 36-40: Choose the letter, A, B, C or D.
36 What conclusions did the writers reach about the inconsistencies in the data from Cuddie
Springs?
A. The different layers of sediment have been mixed over time.
B. The sand evidence is unhelpful and should be disregarded.
C. The area needs to be re-examined when technology improves.
D. The charcoal found in the area cannot be dated.
37 According to the writers, what impact could a natural phenomenon have had on this site?
A. Floods could have caused the death of the megafauna.
B. Floods could have disturbed the archaeological evidence.
C. Bushfires could have prevented humans from settling in the area for any length of time
D. Bushfires could have destroyed much of the evidence left by megafauna and humans
38 What did the writers speculate about the people who lived at this site in 1876?
A. They bred cattle whose bones could have been confused with megafauna
B. They found that the soil was too waterlogged for farming
C. They allowed cattle to move around freely at the site
D. They brought stones there from another area
39 In the final paragraph, what suggestion is given about Australia’s megafauna?
A. A rapid change in climate may have been responsible for the extinction of the megafauna.
B. Megafauna could have died out as a result of small numbers being killed year after year.
C. The population of humans at that time was probably insufficient to cause the extinction of the
megafauna.
D. The extinction of ancient animals should not be compared to that of modern-day species.
40 Which of the following best represents the writers’ criticism of Field and Wroe?
A. Their methods were not well thought out
B. Their excavations did not go deep enough.
C. Their technology failed to obtain precise data.
D. Their conclusions were based on inconsistent data.