When everything is available for sale on your smartphone, why is your mailbox still filled with catalogs? The old-school marketi

admin2021-09-17  65

问题    When everything is available for sale on your smartphone, why is your mailbox still filled with catalogs? The old-school marketing format has survived to play a crucial creative role in modern e-commerce. Today, the catalog is bait for customers, like a store window display, and a source of inspiration, the way roaming through store aisles can be. The hope is shoppers will mark pages they like and then head online, or into a store, to buy.
   Today’s catalogs are no longer phone-book-size compilations of every item a retailer sells. Instead, they have fewer pages and merchandise descriptions, and more and bigger photos and lifestyle images.
   For retailers, creating the inspiration comes with hefty costs, including expensive photo shoots and rising postage rates. However, the potential for boosting sales has brought new interest in print catalogs. Some retailers founded primarily online are entering the fray, including Bonobos, the menswear brand built on the idea of better-fitting pants.
   Marketers mailed 11.9 billion catalogs in 2013, according to the Direct Marketing Association, marking the first uptick in years. Total catalog circulation is still far below the 2007 peak of 19.6 billion. The 2008 recession forced catalog companies to cut dead wood out of their mailing lists and get smarter about how and when they mail.
   Due to catalogs, the sale amount is rising. "Now, some 20% of the website’s first-time customers are placing their order after having received a catalog," says Craig Elbert, vice president of marketing for Bonobos. They spend 1.5 times as much as new shoppers who didn’t receive a catalog first.
   However, catalogs require months of advance planning and production. "It’s easy to fake out a yoga studio so it looks like winter," says Tess Roering, Athleta vice president of creative and marketing. But for skiing, she says, "We need to go to places that have real snow." Thus, the Athleta team is set to travel to New Zealand in a few months.
   Besides, long catalog-making leads brands into specific products. After Athleta featured blue-and-yellow running tights on its April catalog cover, the tights arrived in stores 10 days late. Catalogs sent shoppers to stores for a product that wasn’t there.
   "It’s disappointing," Ms. Roering says, "however, once the tights were in stock, they sold well. So every coin has two sides."

What’s the author’s attitude toward catalogs?

选项 A、Negative.
B、Objective.
C、Positive.
D、Pessimistic.

答案B

解析 态度题。通读全文可知,文中既有对纸质商品目录重大作用的描述,也有对其诸如制作成本高、耗时长等缺点的说明。并且,文章以So every coin has two sides(事物都有两面性)结尾,进一步点明商品目录的优势与劣势,故可判断作者对商品目录的态度是客观的,B项“客观的”为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/Q4q7FFFM
0

最新回复(0)