4. Answer the following questions to discuss the details of the text

1. Has marketing become a driving force in most companies?

2. What business activities does marketing include?

3. Why is marketing sometimes called "distribution"?

4. What do marketing operations include?

5. Does marketing include making decisions?

6. What are the main principles of the marketing concept underlying all marketing strategy?

7. What is the right marketing mix (the four P's)?

8. Why are all divisions of a company urged to think marketing?

9. What is the role of marketing research?

10. What's the role of the construction of good shopping centres?

11. What does marketing in foreign environment often mean?

12. Why is a company that believes in marketing a forward thinking one?

5. Finish the sentences according to the text.

1. Marketing is concerned with ... .

2. Marketing consists of ... .

3. The marketing concept, which ... .

4. The right Marketing Mix helps to ....

5. It is very important to ... .

6. Producers can predict what people will want with the help ... .

7. Customers are influenced to buy through ... .

8. The trend to high mass consumption is reflected in ....

9. If a company wants to achieve international success, ... .

10. A forward thinking company is the one which ....

6. Prove the statements using the information from the text.

Marketing has got a complex structure.

There is a marketing concept underlying all marketing strategy.

Companies are urged to think marketing.

Marketing operations are very expensive.

The trend in the USA has been to high mass consumption.

Understanding the foreign environment is crucial to international success.

A company that believes in marketing is forward thinking

7.Say if the following sentences are true or false before reading the text, then read the text and check your answers.

1. Advertisements have no influence on customers' choice.

2. Modern trade can't do without advertising.

3. To advertise its product a com­pany needs the services of a special agency.

4. The creation of an advertisement needs no preliminary market research.

5. Everyone involved in advertising gets high salaries.

6. Advertising goes against important social values.

7. Government authority can't protect consu­mers against false or harmful advertising.

Advertising and Advertisement

In the eyes of the business world and of many economists, advertising performs an indispensable function. It helps consumers to choose among competing products. Also, by spurring demand for products, it extends the possibilities of mass production and thus leads to the economies of scale and to lower consumer costs. Advertising plays a very important part in modern merchandising. The manufactures tell the public about their new products and the stores tell the public about what they have at what prices.

Advertisements can be seen in newspapers, magazines, and on television every day of week. Many more advertisements are sent to customers' homes.

Advertising companies are called agencies. Each agency sells a lot of different products. Here is how it happens. The first stage is marketing research. Marketing researchers get information in three ways: on the phone, in group discussions, from questionnaires. The agency then writes, films, records and photographs a campaign. This is a series of advertisements on TV, radio, in the newspapers and magazines.

This great business of merchandising employs millions of white-collar workers, from clerks in the stores to top executives in the big department stores and the advertising agencies. For most clerks the salaries are low, but they are among the highest for top executives.

In the business world advertising is sometimes depicted as "the engine of prosperity". From another perspective, however, advertising goes against important social values. It promotes self-indulgence and thus counters moral and religious teachings that urge selflessness. It creates false "needs" and encourages waste.

This inevitable tension between business values and other social values often spills over onto the political stage, with the institutions of government struggling to resolve a point at issue. Should there be limits on the types of products that business people can advertise? Should advertisers be forced to mention the hazards as well as the attractions of products such as cigarettes? Should advertisers be required to substantiate their growing claims? Democratic political processes provide answers to such questions in continuing process of adjustment and change increasingly offering protection to the consumer against false or harmful advertising

Тема: МЕНЕДЖМЕНТ (MANAGEMENT)

Read the text and say if the sentences are true or false.

1. One of the constituents of management is controlling. 2. Manage­ment consists of a number of different activities. 3. Defining objectives is one of the tasks of management. 4. The term "product life cycle" reflects the period of time spent on the production of the product.

5. Product life cycle is always taken into account by managers.

6. Extra sales support helps to solve the problem of products which are at the end of their life cycle.