2011年Text 3

　　真题原文
　　The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional “paid” media — such as television commercials and print advertisements — still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create “earned” media by willingly promoting it to friends, and a company may leverage “owned” media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the process of making purchase decisions means that marketing’s impact stems from a broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.
　　Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initiator for users’ responses. But in some cases, one marketer’s owned media become another marketer’s paid media — for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend, which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies’ marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.
　　The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them.
　　If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company’s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

　　31. Consumers may create “earned” media when they are ___ .
　　[A] obsessed with online shopping at certain Web sites
　　[B] inspired by product-promoting e-mails sent to them
　　[C] eager to help their friends promote quality products
　　[D] enthusiastic about recommending their favorite products

　　32. According to Paragraph 2, sold media feature__.
　　[A] a safe business environment
　　[B] random competition
　　[C] strong user traffic
　　[D] flexibility in organization

　　33. The author indicates in Paragraph 3 that earned media __ .
　　[A] invite constant conflicts with passionate consumers
　　[B] can be used to produce negative effects in marketing
　　[C] may be responsible for fiercer competition
　　[D] deserve all the negative comments about them

　　34. Toyota Motor’s experience is cited as an example of __ .
　　[A] responding effectively to hijacked media
　　[B] persuading customers to boycotting products
　　[C] cooperating with supportive consumers
　　[D] taking advantage of hijacked media

　　35. Which of the following is the text mainly about?
　　[A] Alternatives to conventional paid media.
　　[B] Conflict between hijacked and earned media.
　　[C] Dominance of hijacked media.
　　[D] Popularity of owned media.

31.答案： D
【考点】细节题
【正确项精解】
本题目是个同义释义题。根据题干，可将答案定位在文章的第一段。原文为Consumers passionate about a product may create “earned” media by willingly promoting it to friends，其大意为“痴迷于某种产品的消费者，可能会乐意将之推荐给朋友，为产品所在企业创造无偿媒介。”选项D中的enthusiastic和原文中的passionate同义，且recommend和promote同义，因此D为正确答案。

32.答案： C
【考点】细节题
【正确项精解】
本题目考查“收费”媒介的特点，可将答案定位在文章的第二段。原文提到了“收费”媒介的定义：owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment，其大意为“拥有巨大流量、其他机构前来投放内容或电子商务引擎的自有媒介”。选项C来自于原文，选项A、B、D在文中都没有涉及。

33.答案： B
【考点】推理题
【正确项精解】
本题目中，要特别注意题干中的indicate，indicate强调“原文并没有直接讲述，需要经过推理判断”才能得出的信息。文中第三段讲到科技革新带来的风险，消费者可以通过推荐商品而成为“无偿”媒介，同时技术革新让他们能够更快、更明显地表达观点，挟持媒介施加压力(原文为they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses)，而此处的媒介指的就是上文中提及的earned media;劫持媒介(hijacked media)就是无偿媒介的对立面。也就是说，无偿媒介有可能被劫持，转化为劫持媒介，进而给企业施加压力。由此可推断，这是一种负面效果，所以B为正确答案。

34.答案： A
【考点】主旨题
【正确项精解】
根据题干中的Toyota Motor，可将答案定位在文章的第四段。第四段的第一句为文章的主题句，其大意为：如果发生了这样的事情，狂热的消费者可能试图劝服其他人共同抵制公司产品，从而危及企业声誉。这种情况下，如果企业回应不够快或不够好，就可能会酿成悲剧。接着，文中列举了丰田汽车公司的例子，它能减少部分损失，其原因在于：采取了较快且较有序的社交媒体回应行动。由此判断A为正确答案。

35.答案： A
【考点】主旨题
【正确项精解】
本题目是主旨题，要纵观全文进行判断。文章第一段主要讲述除了传统的媒介方式，还有很多其他媒介形式;第二段详细讲述了自有媒介和收费媒介;第三段分析了劫持媒介的弊端;文章第四段举例说明有效回应劫持媒介的重要性。从文章四个段落的分布来看，第一段提及其他媒介形式，而第二段、第三段、第四段分别讲述了不同的媒介形式。由此可判断A为正确答案。