Part II Reading comprehension (35 minutes)
Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.
Just five one-hundredths of an inch thick, light golden in color and with a perfect “saddle curl,” the Lay’s potato chip seems an unlikely weapon for global domination. But its maker, Frito-Lay, thinks otherwise. “Potato chips are a snack food for the world,” said Salman Amin, the company’s head of global marketing. Amin believes there is no corner of the world that can resist the charms of a Frito-Lay potato chip.
Frito-Lay is the biggest snack maker in America, owned by PepsiCo, and accounts for over half of the parent company’s $3 billion annual profits. But the U.S. snack food market is largely saturated, and to grow, the company has to look overseas.
Its strategy rests on two beliefs: first, a global product offers economies of scale with which local brands cannot compete, and second, consumers in the 21st century are drawn to “global” as a concept. “Global” does not mean products that are consciously identified as American, but ones that consumers — especially young people — see as part of a modem, innovative(创新的) world in which people are linked across cultures by shared beliefs and tastes. Potato chips are an American invention, but most Chinese, for instance, do not know that Frito-Lay is an American company. Instead, Riskey, the company’s research and development head, would hope they associate the brand with the new world of global communications and business.
With brand perception a crucial factor, Riskey ordered a redesign of the Frito-Lay logo(标识). The logo, along with the company’s long-held marketing image of the “irresistibility” of its chips, would help facilitate the company’s global expansion.
The executives acknowledge that they try to swing national eating habits to a food created in America, but they deny that amounts to economic imperialism. Rather, they see Frito-Lay as spreading the benefits of free enterprise across the world. “We’re making products in those countries, we’re adapting them to the tastes of those countries, building businesses and employing people and changing lives,” said Steve Reinemund, PepsiCo’s chief executive.
原文出处：
FritoLay: Using Potato Chips to Spread the Spirit of Free Enterprise
Just five one-hundredths of an inch thick, light golden in color and with a perfect "saddle curl," the Lay's potato chip seems an unlikely weapon for global domination.
But its maker, Texas-based Frito-Lay, thinks otherwise. "Potato chips are a snack for the world," said Salman Amin, the company's head of global marketing. Amin believes there is no corner of the world, no race or tribe, that can resist the charms of a Frito-Lay potato chip.
The Chinese might have their nyen gao ping, made from rice flour, and the Indians their lentil-and-chickpea namkeens, but Frito-Lay believes they would rather be eating potato chips. The company's research has shown that when given a choice between their local snack and a Frito-Lay chip, consumers in most countries will choose the chip.
Putting its findings into practice, Frito-Lay has expanded on all five continents by buying up local snack makers or defeating them with its marketing expertise and sheer size.
"Never have we introduced Lay's potato chips and had it not be successful," said Dwight Riskey, the research and development head who devised Frito-Lay's global strategy five years ago. "It's been successful every single place we've introduced it."
Thinking Globally, Acting Globally
Frito-Lay, which also produces Doritos and Chee-tos, is the biggest snack maker in the United States, with 55 percent of the potato chip market. It is owned by PepsiCo, and accounts for more than half of the parent company's $3 billion profits every year. But the U.S. snack market is largely saturated, and in order to grow — the key to remaining successful — the company had to look overseas.
Riskey's strategy rests on two beliefs: first, that a global product offers economies of scale with which local brands cannot compete, and second that consumers in the 21st century are drawn to "global" as a concept. By "global," Riskey does not mean products that are consciously identified as American, like Coca-Cola and Nike, but ones that consumers — especially young people — see as part of a modern, innovative world in which people are linked across cultures by shared beliefs and tastes. Potato chips are an American invention — created by a chef in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. in 1853 — but most Chinese, for instance, do not know that Frito-Lay is an American company. Instead, Riskey would hope they associate the brand with the brave new world of global communications and business.
With brand perception a crucial factor, Riskey ordered a redesign of the Frito-Lay logo, eventually settling on a red logo with a banner suggesting "celebration" and a sun denoting "universality." The logo, along with the company's long-held marketing image of the "irresistibility" of its chips, would underpin the company's global expansion.
