英语听力课程：会议报告、市场调研与消费行为解析

This lesson continues our look at reporting in meetings and specifically looking at saying and noting dollar amounts in terms related to money. We'll also look at vocabulary related to frequency, that is how often we do something. Before we begin, here's some vocabulary related to marketing. It's often confusing to know the difference between words like consumer, customer, and client. So let's look at each one. A consumer is anyone who buys or uses a product or service. The verb form is consume, but it's not as common as the words buy or use. A client is someone who uses or pays for a professional service, like at an accounting firm or lawyer's office. Customer means someone who buys a product or service from a business, so for example Starbucks and Costco have lots of customers. The word user is quite common now because of technology. For example, are you a Mac or a Windows user? We also use it in the expression user friendly when we talk about the customer experience.

Companies try to reach certain types of consumers, their target market. For example, the toy company sells games. Its target market is families with children. In order to learn more about these target markets, companies do market research. One common word used in market research is likely. It means what is the possibility or probability, and it's followed by two plus a verb, how likely are consumers to buy from our company. They're likely to want big cars. Men are more likely to say that. Teenagers are the most likely to buy soda. Business groups and surveys are common ways to get information about consumers. A focus group is a face-to-face meeting with a group of people who give their opinions on something. It's a good way for a company to find out what features of a product or service are important to consumers.

Surveys are sets of questions to find out about consumer preferences and buying behavior. For example, do you prefer milk chocolate or dark chocolate? How often do you buy candy? There are lots of ways to conduct a survey, face-to-face, online, in a mailing or by telephone. We ask the focus group six questions. We survey 300 people to find out more information about their buying habits. The marketing team conducted a survey of 300 people. In lesson one, you heard about plans for a survey that reneared chocolates wants to conduct. There's a list of some information they might include. Listen as they survey two consumers. Which topic did they not ask about?