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.

Which of the following is the synonym of ‘rational’ as is highlighted in the passage?

  1. A.

    analytical

  2. B.

    lethargically

  3. C.

    cynical

  4. D.

    abysmal

  5. E.

    None of these

Attempted by 5 students.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A

CONCEPT: A synonym question asks for the word that most closely shares the meaning of the target word in the sense it carries in the passage. 'Rational' means based on reason and logic - thinking things through with the mind rather than acting on feeling. The right choice must match that reason/logic-driven sense and be the same part of speech (an adjective describing a 'need').

APPLICATION: In the passage, Marketing 3.0 aims to meet the 'rational and emotional needs' of customers - here 'rational' describes the reasoning, logic-driven side of a customer's needs, set against the 'emotional' side. The choice that captures 'using reason and logical analysis' is 'analytical', an adjective that conveys the same reason-based quality as the highlighted word.

CONTRAST: 'lethargically' is an adverb meaning in a sluggish, low-energy way - wrong part of speech and unrelated to reasoning. 'cynical' means distrustful of others' motives, a negative attitude, not a way of reasoning. 'abysmal' means extremely bad or of very poor quality, which has nothing to do with logic. Since one option clearly matches the reason-based sense, 'None of these' does not apply.

CROSS-CHECK: Standard thesauri (e.g. Merriam-Webster, Oxford) list 'analytic/analytical' among the synonyms of 'rational', both turning on the idea of reasoning by logic - confirming the match.

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