Directions: Read the given passage and answer the questions based on that…
2022
Directions: Read the given passage and answer the questions based on that
Marketing is all about connecting with the customer. And in today’s marketplace, customers are changing. Their needs, demands, wants, attitudes, mindsets, behavior, habits, consumption are changing. Especially given the rapid change not only in technological development and tools, but also their adoption into normal everyday life, marketing is — or needs to — change along with the times. It has been seen that the traditional consumers are more predictable a creature of habit. The new ones are more socially aware, and thus often more responsive to socially responsible consumption of goods and services. Having more information at their fingertips, many customers are much more judicious giving them more confidence — and also less inclined to blindly consume spoon-fed information from brands and companies. This means they are the new _______________ for growth. Millennials may seem like an overused term nowadays, but there is no denying the importance these customers have on the way companies do business. Keeping this in mind, brands should be more conscious and wiser in the way they interact with their clients and customers. Part of this is developing marketing that does not lose touch with customers; marketing that the customers of today can relate to. Companies’ survival will thus be contingent on better understanding this new crop of customers, as well as how the current environment — one that is largely digital in nature — factors into how these customers think, behave and consume. And thus, Marketing 4.0 was born. But you cannot talk about Marketing 4.0 without tackling what came before. Marketing 1.0 was largely productional based and the most basic, born out of the manufacturing boom in the 1950’s. But the crisis in the 70’s and 80’s created Marketing 2.0, which is also called relational marketing. Here, consumers started becoming more smarter in their spending (given the economic hardship prevalent at that time), meaning companies needed to find things customers could relate to in order to prompt a positive, beneficial response. Marketing departments now classified customers through basic profiling, and companies were beginning to understand the importance and impact of customer loyalty, engagement, and advocacy. The evolution of the old approach gave birth to Marketing 3.0, where the objective was to meet both the rational and emotional needs of customers. It’s also called the “appeal to emotion,” or “emotional marketing.” As opposed to the two previous approaches where the market was seen as product driven (Marketing 1.0), mass market with smarter customers (Marketing 2.0), Marketing 3.0 saw customers as people, instead of just segments.
How new generation consumers are different from traditional ones?
- A.
The current generation of consumers is less predictable in comparison to the traditional ones.
- B.
The new consumers are more mindful and sensible than the traditional ones.
- C.
The new consumers are more informed and discerning compared with traditional consumers.
- D.
Only (b) and (c)
- E.
All of these
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: E
Concept
In a reading-comprehension question of the "How is X different from Y?" type, the correct response is the one that captures every contrast the passage actually draws. When a passage lists several distinct points of difference, an option that bundles all of those supported points together ("All of these") is correct only if each individual statement is independently backed by the text.
Application to this passage
The passage explicitly contrasts new-generation consumers with traditional ones on three separate counts. Each claim maps to a line in the text:
Predictability: the passage says traditional consumers are "more predictable, a creature of habit" — so the new ones are, by contrast, less predictable.
Social mindfulness: the new consumers are described as "more socially aware" and "more responsive to socially responsible consumption" — i.e. more mindful and sensible.
Being informed: "Having more information at their fingertips, many customers are much more judicious" — i.e. more informed and discerning.
All three differences are stated in the passage, so the response that gathers every one of them — "All of these" — is the complete and correct answer.
Cross-check
"Only two of the three" would be wrong because it drops a difference the passage clearly makes. Any single statement on its own is true but incomplete — it ignores the other two contrasts the text establishes. Only the all-inclusive response accounts for every point the passage raises.