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- IELTS reading multiple-choice questions
- IELTS reading matching features questions
- IELTS reading matching sentence endings questions
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IELTS reading passage – Making The Most of Trends
Making The Most of Trends
The majority of CEOs have succeeded in detecting the next top trend. By doing research in a variety of sectors and working directly with businesses, we’ve seen that executives often overlook the less visible but significant ways that these trends are affecting customers’ goals, attitudes, and actions. This is particularly true for developments that managers believe have little bearing on their core businesses.
Many companies’ innovation plans disregard trends or take a wait-and-see attitude, giving rivals a leg up. Such replies, at the very least, result in the obliteration of surplus possibilities. Allowing competitors to disrupt an industry might put a company’s future in jeopardy. The goal of this paper is to urge managers to explore how fluctuations in their primary markets may result in new value assumptions. It also generates some high-level ideas for enhancing market experimentation and the ability of product development teams to identify and capitalize on trends.
A technique known as “infuse and enhance” creates a product or service that preserves the majority of the characteristics and capabilities of comparable items in the category while also including new features that cater to the wants and desires sparked by a significant trend. An illustration is the Poppy collection of handbags, which Coach designed in reaction to the 2008 economic slump. For nearly 70 years, the Coach name has stood for extravagance and elegance, and the most logical response to the recession would have been to decrease costs. That, however, carried the risk of devaluing the brand’s reputation. Instead, they started a project to research consumer behavior, which showed that people were eager to help themselves and the country out of difficult circumstances.
Supermarket Tesco’s reaction to customers’ rising environmental concerns is another example of this. With this in mind, Tesco, one of the world’s top five retailers, introduced its Greener Living project, which emphasized the company’s commitment to environmental conservation by engaging customers in ways that produce practical results. Customers at Tesco, for example, may receive points for reusing bags, recycling cans, purchasing printer cartridges, and purchasing home insulation. These green points, like the ones earned on regular settlement, may be swapped for cash. Tesco hasn’t abandoned its traditional retail offers; rather, with this adjustment, it has expanded them, giving its value proposition a more environmentally friendly appearance.
A more extreme way is to combine and transcend. This necessitates combining elements of the product’s current value proposition with characteristics such as inscription alterations resulting from a desire to create a unique experience -– one that might lead to the company entering an entirely new market sector. Putting effort into adopting components of a minor trend into one’s main services looks to be a waste of time at first glance. Consider Nike’s choice to incorporate the digital uprising into their high-performance sporting footwear. In 2006, they collaborated with Apple to create Nike+, a digital sports kit that comprises a tracker that syncs with the running shoe and a wireless receiver that connects to the user’s iPod. Nike’s original amateur athlete value proposition is paired with Nike’s new professional athlete value proposition.
A third method termed “counteract and reaffirm,” involves developing goods or ministries that stress the category’s underlying values in ways that enable customers to resist – or at least temporarily escape from – components of trends they find distasteful. ME2, a video game produced by iToys in Canada, is one such product. The ME2 mitigated some of the usually assumed negative consequences of digital gaming devices by strengthening the toy category’s association with physical play. The device, like other handy games, features a range of entertaining interactive games, a full-color LCD screen, and strong 3D graphics. It was unique because it had a pedometer that tracked how much youngsters moved and paid them for it.
After you’ve gained a deeper grasp of how trend-related changes in consumer perceptions and behaviors influence your category, you may choose which of our three innovation dexterities to pursue. The infuse-and-augment approach will assist you in resuming your category if the core value proposition remains relevant for trend-influenced consumers. If your assessment reveals a rising gap between your category and your consumers’ new prominence, your innovations will have to go beyond the category to bridge the gap. Finally, if aspects of your category contradict a bad tendency, such as a connection to an unhealthy way of life, you may reverse these changes by reviewing your category’s essential principles.
Intellectual, economic, environmental, social, and legal trends that govern how people think and behave around them and influence what they expect from goods and services provide firms with unique growth prospects.
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IELTS reading multiple-choice questions
Write the correct letter in boxes 1–5 on your answer sheet.
1. In the first paragraph, the writer says that most managers
A. Fail to recognize the current consumer trends.
B. Makes the error of concentrating just on the major consumer trends.
C. Market research data on current consumer trends is often misinterpreted.
D. Are oblivious to the tremendous influence that trends have on the lives of consumers.
2. According to the third paragraph, the Coach was anxious to
A. Take a look at what some of its rivals were up to.
B. Keeps its charges consistent throughout the board.
C. Maintain its position as a luxury goods manufacturer.
D.To fit the economic context, the company changed the whole appearance of its brand.
3. What is the significance of Tesco’s Greener Living program?
A. It did not require Tesco to modify its core business activities.
B. It was successful in drawing a more environmentally concerned customer.
C. The campaign’s major goal was to increase consumer awareness of environmental concerns.
D. Tesco was hardly the first retailer to take such a step.
4. What does the author have to say about Nike’s marketing strategy?
A. At the time, it was a very dangerous tactic.
B. It was a strategy that only a major company could afford to follow.
C. It was a technique that would have been impossible to implement in the past.
D. It was the kind of plan that seemed to have few evident advantages.
5. What was original about ME2?
A. It incorporated technologies designed specifically for the sports sector.
B. It drew the attention of young individuals who wanted to be in better shape.
C. It took advantage of a current trend for video games with colorful 3D graphics.
D. It was a portable game designed to address people’s worries about leading unhealthy lives.
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IELTS reading matching features questions
Look at the following statements (Questions 6-–11) and the list of companies below. Match each statement with the correct company, A, B, C, or D. Write the correct letter, A, B, C, or D, in boxes 6-11 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.
6. It used the possibility that its goods may cause damage to its advantage.
7. By cooperating with another company, it was able to expand its product line.
8. To illustrate its corporate social responsibility, it established an incentive program.
9. Customers were observed to have a positive attitude in dealing with adverse situations.
10. It was a reaction to a burgeoning lifestyle trend in a completely different product category.
11. It was able to avoid having to lower its key product prices.
List of companies
A. Coach
B. Tesco
C. Nike
D. iToys
Improve your performance in Matching Features questions by clicking here to access our comprehensive guide. Learn how to match specific features or characteristics with the options provided in the IELTS Reading section.
IELTS reading matching sentence endings questions
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A, B, C, or D below.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C, or D, in boxes 12–14 on your answer sheet.
12. If any trend-related changes are impacting your category, you should
13. If a current trend highlights a negative aspect of your category, you should
14. If the consumers’ new focus has an increasing lack of connection with your offering, you should
A. To keep your customer base, use a variety of techniques.
B. Determine the best innovative approach to use.
C. With the counteract-and-affirm technique, you may emphasize your brand’s traditional values.
D. To merge the two worlds, use the combine-and-transcend technique.
Ready to sharpen your skills in Matching Sentence Endings? Click here to discover expert strategies and techniques for accurately matching sentence endings with the corresponding information in the IELTS Reading section.
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Making The Most of Trends IELTS Reading Answers
1. D.
2. C.
3. A.
4. D.
5. D.
6. D. 9
7. C.
8. B.
9. A.
10. C.
11. A.
12. B.
13. C.
14. D.
We hope you found this post useful in helping you to study for the IELTS Test. If you have any questions please let us know in the comments below or on the Facebook page.
The best way to keep up to date with posts like this is to like us on Facebook, then follow us on Instagram and Pinterest. If you need help preparing for the IELTS Test, join the IELTS Achieve Academy and see how we can assist you to achieve your desired band score. We offer an essay correction service, mock exams and online courses.
