Supply and demand

Let’s read!

Hello!
When thinking of products or services, Supply
and demand is something you have to take
care of. I invite you to read the text about
this interesting topic.
But it also implies another thing which is the
Marketing mix. I invite you to read the follo-
wing text.

Using the marketing mix

The luxurious perfumery at The Galeries Lafayette Department store

in Paris only sells premium brands.

An exclusive brand of jewellery uses the best materials but comes at

a high price. Such designer brands can only be bought at exclusive
stores and are promoted using personal selling sales assistants. By con-
trast, cheap and cheerful jewellery for the mass market is best sold
in supermarkets and can be promoted using television adverts.

Market research findings are important in developing the overall mar-

keting mix for a given product. By identifying specific customer needs
a business can adjust the features, appearance, price and distri-
bution method for a target market segment.

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 Supply and demand

New technologies and changing fashion means goods and services have
a limited product life cycle. Ideally, the marketing mix is adjusted to
take account of each stage. For example, the life of a product can be
extended by changing packaging to freshen a tired brand and so boost
sales.

Market stalls generally sell inexpensive items.

There is no single right marketing mix that works for all businesses at all
times. The combination of product, price promotion and place chosen by
a business will depend on its size, competition, the nature of the product
and its objectives.

The overall marketing mix is the business’ marketing strategy and is

judged a success if it meets the marketing department’s objectives, e.g,
increase annual sales by 5%.

Taken and adapted from:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/business/marketing/marketingmixrev2.shtml
on August the 20th 2012.

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 Supply and demand

Let’s write!

Guys!

Based on the listening, do the

writing activity. Don’t forget to
send it through the platform.

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 Supply and demand
A
B
C

Vocabulary

Now, let’s work with some words

related to the reading “Using the
marketing mix”.

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 Supply and demand

Let’s listen!

Hi!

I invite you to listen about a person who

created an application based on a need he
had. That’s an example of the things you
need to take into account for your product
or business.
While listening to the report, read it, answer
it and send it to your tutor, according to his/
her instructions.

A Hollywood Movie Producer Helps Develop Mobile

Calendar Application

This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.

Smartphones, tablet computers and e-readers have become a part of

everyday life for many people. They have also led to an explosion in
the number of mobile applications. There is an app for just about any-
thing you can think of. And more and more apps are being created
every day.

Robert DiNozzi is a Hollywood movie producer. He is perhaps most

well-known as the executive producer of “Flight Plan,” the two thou-
sand five movie starring actress Jodie Foster.

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 Supply and demand

His most recent claim to fame is as co-developer of a brand new app

called “VoiceCal.” It is a mobile calendar app that uses voice recogni-
tion software. Users are able to enter appointments into their iPhone
calendar without having to type in the information.

ROBERT DiNOZZI: “I have a mobile phone but in order to put anything

in my calendar, I had to pull over, stop what I was doing or wait until
I got somewhere to remember to do it because it was such an arduous
process of hunting and pecking and typing in with my fingers. And it
got to the point where I just wasn’t using the calendar on my iPhone
and neither was anybody else that I knew.”

Robert DiNozzi decided there had to be a better way. So he teamed up

with a friend who is a developer. The two used voice recognition soft-
ware from a company called Nuance to build “VoiceCal.”

ROBERT DiNOZZI: “When you launch VoiceCal you can speak any
event that you want to go into your calendar and you can speak it in
a natural way. For example, you can say ‘on Tuesday at five p.m. pick
up Dad at the office.’ And that will appear instantly on your iPhone’s
calendar.”

If you have two or more events to add to the calendar, you separate
them by using the word “also.” Mr. DiNozzi says all of this can be done
hands-free.

ROBERT DiNOZZI: “In settings you can make it fully automatic, so I

don’t have to touch anything. I launch the app, and I can speak an
event and I can see the event show up and it confirms automatically.
I don’t have to touch a single thing. That’s huge for people who don’t
have assistants to call and who are walking down the street or driving
their car.”

Robert DiNozzi says there is a great need for an app like “VoiceCal”
among busy businessmen like himself. He hopes the app will be success-
ful over the long term.

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 Supply and demand

ROBERT DiNOZZI: “In the movie business you can do all the advertising
in the world and that can get you a great opening weekend. But, if the
movie’s not good it will die off. So really what supports a film, just like
what supports an app, is word of mouth.”

Matt Kozlov is the head of a start-up technology company called

“Moonshark” in Los Angeles, California. The company makes game
apps for mobile devices.

MATT KOZLOV: “It’s an exploding marketplace, right now. There are

hundreds of millions of devices out there right now that we can reach.
And these devices have really turned eight-year-old kids, forty-year-
old moms into gamers in a way that we’ve never seen before.”

Jennifer Lopez is helping Moonshark with a finger break-dancing game

called “Dance Pad.” The company is also working with film director
John Woo on an action game expected to be released at the end of this
year.

And that’s the VOA Special English Technology Report, written by June
Simms, with additional reporting by Elizabeth Lee. Transcripts, MP3s
and podcasts of our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com. We’re also on
Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. I’m Steve Ember.

Taken and adapted from:

http://youtu.be/twOXqQBsMmo

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