2012年7月7日雅思大作文真题:广告对消费者的影响

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?Advertising usually encourages consumers to buy a product or service in quantity rather than promoting its quality.Give reasons for your answer and include any examples from your own knowledge or experience. Advertising is the life of trade as suppliers want to sell things in quantity; however, the success or failure of every advertisement eventually depends on the quality of a product or service. It may be said that a bad investment is going for quantity over quality, without being aware that customers are becoming more careful with their wallets, especially with the sluggish economy right now. While quality sounds hard to define, you know that it is quality rather than quantity that matters. The greatest thing to be achieved in advertising is believability, and nothing is more believable than the product itself. So, the most powerful element in advertising is the truth, not half lying. For example, a huge advertising campaign will make a bad product fail faster because it will certainly get more people to know that it is bad. In comparison, good advertising can not only circulate information, but it can also penetrate the public mind with belief along with desires. This means that quality is self-evident and that every advertisement should be thought of as a complex symbol which is the brand image. That is probably why word of mouth is the best medium of all. In short, it is advisable for suppliers to always upgrade quality before any attempt to boost sales through advertising. Although advertising is the most effective way to encourage mass consumption, particularly if the goods are cheap and worthless, the bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low pricing is forgotten. In a certain way, quality is like cooking, and you cannot fake good quality any more than you can fake a good meal. Therefore, quality in a product is not what the supplier puts in; rather, it is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. That is to say, a product is not quality simply because it is difficult to make and costs a lot of money in advertising. It is better to think that customers only pay for what is of use to them and give them great value for right price. As can be expected, the advertising strategy to increase popular consumption is likely to result in incompetence since nothing else than the product itself constitutes quality. In conclusion, just because quality is more important than quantity, it does not mean that advertising does not play a decisive role in influencing the public mind. The point is that consumers have now become more prudent in spending behaviors and hence are no longer as penny-wise and quality-foolish as before. In all events, suppliers should continue investing in advertising their quality products because, if they stop advertising to save money, it would be as stupid as stopping the clock to save time.