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  3. Unmarried men across China used to spend Nov. 11 lamenting their single

Unmarried men across China used to spend Nov. 11 lamenting their single

游客2024-11-05  11
问题         Unmarried men across China used to spend Nov. 11 lamenting their single status with a drink. Now that unofficial holiday has become the world’s largest online shopping event. The following two excerpts are about this online shopping carnival. Though it sees record breaking sales every year, it causes many concerns meanwhile.
        Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should:
        1. summarize the development of Double-11 craze, and then
        2. express your opinion towards this festival, especially whether consumers are truly benefiting from it.
Excerpt 1
        At one second after midnight, when the calendar flips to November 11th, millions of Chinese shoppers will start clicking themselves into a frenzy of consumer excess. Through their smartphones, computers and tablets, they will take advantage of steep discounts and other incentives offered by China’s biggest online retailers, who have been busily laying the groundwork with advertising campaigns and assiduous logistical preparations. By the time midnight rolls round the following day, shoppers will have spent billions of yuan, and many of the hundreds of millions of packages that they ordered online will have been delivered to their doors. How did a frivolous and informal Chinese holiday evolve into the world’s biggest single-day retail event?
        November 11th is "Singles’ Day" in China, a holiday that now occasions these massive movements of merchandise. Since the 1990s it has been observed casually and playfully by unmarried Chinese to celebrate—or perhaps bemoan—their single status. The date was chosen because of the four ones it contains (11/11). It is the Alibaba Group that claims the credit for transforming Single’s Day into a shopping orgy. In 2009, one of its executives was trawling the calendar for an autumn date to serve as the foundation for a Chinese shopping day that could rival America’s Black Friday— the day after Thanksgiving that marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The goal was to use discounts and other one-off promotions to lure China’s already-avid consumer class into online retail. The promotion was an immediate success and has grown since: shoppers spent more than 57 billion yuan via Alibaba alone last year. That dwarfs the $1.5 billion spent by Americans online during last year’s Black Friday.
Excerpt 2
        "I like ’Double Eleven’. Everything is cheap on this day. This year, I’m only buying clothes. They are much cheaper online than they are in shopping malls. But the thing is, you’ve got to be careful on this day. You need to compare the prices offered in different shops, because some shops will raise prices first before they lower it on Single’s Day." said Li Jianhua, a customer in Beijing.
        One issue which tends to crop up every year is the availability of products people want to buy. Zhao Ping with the Ministry of Commerce says they’ve found a growing number of retailers, particularly those selling products online, are simply using Single’s Day as a way to promote their own site.
        "The ’Double Eleven’ shopping spree is more complicated than it seems. Many online shops are involved in the promotion. But their supplies often don’t meet the demand. Many people have found that the low-price products they’ve set their sights on are gone almost instantly. Many businesses use this trick to attract customers to their online shops, benefiting only a very small number of their customers."
        The Commerce Ministry is also warning consumers to be wary of certain ’bargains,’ noting many retailers will begin increasing the prices of their products in advance of Single’s Day to try to fool shoppers into thinking they’re getting a good deal with the Single’s Day price-cut.
选项
答案                                                                         Does Consumers Truly Benefit from Double-11 Craze?
        Only several years ago, November 11th was just an unofficial festival that enables unmarried Chinese to make fun of their single status. However, it today strikes people as almost the synonym of online shopping, a carnival known as "Double 11" for both consumers and retailers as the low price and the availability of commodities, but after these several years, a sensible and shrewd consumer should have already seen through the trick of this "Double 11" shopping craze. It benefits the retailers far more than the consumers.
        The worst part of the "Double 11" shopping spree is that many retailers actually cheat in their promotion. They either raise the prices of certain products beforehand and offer a discount on November 11th or mix products that are on sale with very similar products that don’t have any discount. Consumers have to be wary of tricks in disguise, or they could easily end up spending more money than they normally should. Also, with all the promotion and advertising for the "Double 11" as an incentive, people are inclined to be influenced and make orders on an impulse. Whether something is useful doesn’t seem to bother people any more. Whether it is worth buying is all that one takes into account. So consumers would congratulate themselves on getting good bargains on November 11th, and feel sorry for squandering so much on things they have no use for on November 12th. In addition, the fun of shopping doesn’t only come from discounts; instead, the whole shopping process matters. Limited supplies of low-price products and deferred delivery of November 11th would definitely contribute to an unsatisfied shopping experience.
        From where I stand, the "Double 11" shopping spree should not be overly promoted. Consumers should learn to make rational decisions when it comes to shopping. Think twice before make an order.
解析         材料围绕“双十一购物节”给出两篇选段，分别讲了“双十一”的现状和由来、成功的原因以及存在的问题。
        选段一描述了“双十一”疯狂的购物现象及其由来。11月11日前夕，上百万的中国消费者在网上疯狂点击购买商品（a frenzy of consumer excess），此前商家也做好了充分的宣传（advertising campaigns）和物流准备（logistical preparations）。这个购物狂欢节（a shopping orgy）实际上是从单身节（Single’s Day）演变而来，阿里巴巴的团队受美国的“黑色星期五”启发而促成这个购物节，但阿里巴巴570亿的交易额远超过美国的15亿。
        选段二则分析了“双十一”取得如此成功的原因主要有两个，一是实惠的价格（cheap），二是购买方便（the availability of products）。但也存在一些问题，包括有些商家会刻意事先提价（raise prices first）再降价；促销的供给量少，不能满足顾客需求（don’t meet the demand）。
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