1、海量资料下载 免费学习英语 （申请网址）洛基国际英语 竭诚为您服务How shops can exploit peoples herd mentality to increase sales 1. A TRIP to the supermarket may not seem like an exercise in psychological warfarebut it is. Shopkeepers know that filling a store with the aroma of freshly baked bread makes people feel hungry and pers
2、uades them to buy more food than they had intended. Stocking the most expensive products at eye level makes them sell faster than cheaper but less visible competitors. Now researchers are investigating how “swarm intelligence” (that is, how ants, bees or any social animal, including humans, behave i
3、n a crowd) can be used to influence what people buy. 2. At 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 phenomenon. Supermarkets
4、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 them. Mr Usmani and Ronaldo Menezes, also of the Florida Institute of Technol
5、ogy, set out to enhance this tendency to buy more by playing on the herd instinct. The idea is that, if a certain product is seen to be popular, shoppers are likely to choose it too. The challenge is to keep customers informed about what others are buying. 3. Enter smart-cart technology. In Mr Usman
6、is 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 computer. As a customer walks past a shelf of goods, a screen on the shelf te
7、lls him how many people currently in the shop have chosen that particular product. If the number is high, he is more likely to select it too. 4. Mr Usmanis “swarm-moves” model appeals to supermarkets because it increases sales without the need to give people discounts. And it gives shoppers the sati
8、sfaction of knowing that they bought the “right” productthat is, the one everyone else bought. The 海量资料下载 免费学习英语 （申请网址）洛基国际英语 竭诚为您服务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 s
9、ome supermarkets. But 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. 5. Another recent study on the power of social influence indicates that sales could, indeed, be boosted in this way. Matthew Salganik of C
10、olumbia University in New York and his colleagues have described creating an artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs. The researchers found that when people could see the songs ranked by how many times they had been downloaded, they followed the crowd.
11、 When the songs were not ordered by rank, butthe number of times they had been downloaded was displayed, the effect of social influence was still there but was less pronounced. People thus follow the herd when it is easy for them to do so. 6. In Japan a chain of convenience shops called RanKing RanQ
12、ueen has been ordering its products according to sales data from department stores and research companies. The shops sell only the most popular items in each product category, and the rankings are updated weekly. Icosystem, a company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also aims to exploit knowledge of soc
13、ial networking to improve sales. 7. And the psychology that works in physical stores is just as potenton the internet. Online retailers such as Amazon are adept at telling shoppers which products are popular with like-Mart in America and Tesco in Britain are interested in his work, and testing will
14、get under way in the spring. Questions 1-6 Complete the sentences below with words taken from the reading passage. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. 1. Shopowners realize that the smell of _ can increase sales of food products. 2. In shops, products shelved at a more visible level sell b
15、etter even if they are more _. 3. According to Mr. Usmani, with the use of “swarm intelligence” ph海量资料下载 免费学习英语 （申请网址）洛基国际英语 竭诚为您服务enomenon, a new method can be applied to encourage _. 4. On the way to everyday items at the back of the store, shoppers might be tempted to buy _. 5. If the number of
16、buyers shown on the _ is high, other customers tend to follow them. 6. Using the “swarm-moves” model, shopowners do not have to give customers _ to increase sales. Questions 7-12 Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? For questions 7-12 write YES if the
17、statement agrees with the information NO if the statement contraicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage 7. Radio frequency identification technology has been installed experimentally in big supermarkets like Wal-Mart. 8. People tend to download more unknown s
18、ongs than songs they are familiar with. 9. Songs ranked high by the number of times being downloaded are favored by customers. 10. People follow the others to the same extent whether it is convenient or not. 11. Items sold in some Japanese stores are simply chosen according tothe sales data of other
19、 shops. 12. Swarm intelligence can also be observed in everyday life. 海量资料下载 免费学习英语 （申请网址）洛基国际英语 竭诚为您服务Answer keys: 1. 答案：(freshly baked) bread. (第 1段第 2行：Shoppers 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
20、intended.) 2. 答案：expensive. (第 1段第 4行： Stocking the most expensive products at eye level makes them sell faster than cheaper but less visible competitors.) 3. 答案：impulse buying. (第 2段第 1句：At a recent conference on the simulation of adaptive behaviour in Rome, Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, a computer sci
21、entist from the Florida Institute of Technology, described a new way to increase impulse buying using this phenomenon.) 4. 答案：other (tempting) goods/things/products. (第 2段第 2句：Supermarkets already encourage shoppers to buy things they did not realise they wanted: for instance, by placing everyday it
22、ems such as milk and eggs at the back of the store, forcing shoppers to walk past other tempting goods to reach them.) 5. 答案：screen. (第 3段第 4行：As 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 product. If the
23、number is high, he is more likely to select it too.) 6. 答案：discounts. (第 4段第第 1句：Mr Usmanis “swarm-moves”model appeals to supermarkets because it increases sales without theneed to give people discounts.) 7. 答案：NO. (第 4段第 3、4 句：The model has not yet been tested widely in the real world, mainly becau
24、se radio frequency identification technology is new and has only been installed experimentally in some supermarkets. But Mr Usmani says that both Wal-Mart in America an Tesco in Britain are interestd in his workd, and testing will get under way in the spring. 短语 “get under way”的意思是“开始进行”，在 Wal-Mart的
25、试验要等到春天才开始) 8. 答案：NOT GIVEN. (在文中没有提及该信息) 9. 答案：YES。 (第 5段第 3句：The reseachers found that when people 海量资料下载 免费学习英语 （申请网址）洛基国际英语 竭诚为您服务could see the songs ranked by how many times they have been downloaded, they followed the crowd.) 10. 答案：NO。 (第 5段最后两句：When the songs are not ordered by rank, but th
26、e number of times they had been downloaded was displayed, the effect of social influence was still there but was less pronounced. People thus follow the herd when it is easy for them to do so. pronounced的词义是“显著的、明显的”) 11. 答案：YES。 (第 6段第 1句：In Japan a chain of convenience shops called RanKing RanQueen has been ordering its products according to sales data from department stores and research companies.) 12. 答案：YES。 (最后一段最后一句：Even in the privacy of your home, you can still be part of the swarm. home应该算是 everyday life的一部分) “成千上万人疯狂下载。 。 。 。 。 。更多价值连城的绝密英语学习资料，洛基内部秘密英语，技巧，策略请在 网上 申请报名”
