When retailers want to entice customers to buy a particular product, they typically offer it at a discount. According to a new study to be published in the Journal of Marketing, they are missing a trick. 11 A team of researchers, led by Akshay Rao of the University of Minnesota"s Carlson School of Mana gement, looked at consumers" attitudes to discounting.Shoppers, they found, much prefer getting something extra flee to getting something cheaper. The main reason is that most people are useless at fractions.Consumers often struggle to realize, for example, that a 50% increase in quantity is the same as a 33% discount in price. They overwhelmingly assume the former is better value. 12 In an experiment, the researchers sold 73% more hand lotion when it was offered in a bonus pack than when it carried an equivalent discount(even after all other effects, such as a desire to stockpile, were controlled for).This numerical blind spot remains even when the deal clearly favors the discounted product. 13 In an other experiment, this time on his undergraduates, Mr. Rao offered two deals on loose coffee beans: 33% extra free or 33% off the price.The discount is by far the better proposition, but the supposedly clever students viewed them as equivalent.Studies have shown other ways in which retailers can exploit consumers" innumeracy. One is to befuddle them with double discounting. 14 People are more likely to see a bargain in a product that has been reduced by 20%, and then by an additional 25% than one which has been subject to an equivalent, one-off, 40% reduction.Marketing types can draw lessons beyond just pricing, says Mr. Rao. 15 When advertising a new car"s efficiency, for example, it is more convincing to talk about the number of extra miles per gallon it does, rather than the equivalent percentage fall in fuel consumption.There may be lessons for regulators too. Evert well-educated shoppers are easily foxed. Sending every one back to school for maths refresher-courses seems out of the question. But more prominently displayed unit prices in shops and advertisements would be a great help.
悲悯生命 毕淑敏 科技发展了,现代人读的是电子读物,乘的是波音飞机。作家,比以前不好当。你能看到的书,他人也能看到。你能参观的自然景点异域风光,别人也许去过得更早更多。从前的诗人,骑一小毛驴,走啊走,四蹄就踏出一首千古绝唱。现代你就是跨着登月火箭,也是干抓一把火山灰阑珊归来。 也许是不自信,我基本上不写游记,不写历史,不写我的时代以外的故事。我将笔触更多地剖向我所生长的土壤,目光关注危机四伏的世界。 写作长篇小说,是一个作家的光荣与梦想(绝无贬低专写短篇小说的大师的意思)。几年前,当我决定开始写作生平第一部长篇小说的时候,具体写什么内容,一时拿不定主意。经过多年储备,很有几份材料,是可以写成长篇小说的。它们像一些元宵的胚芽,小而很有棱角地站在我的糯米面箩里,召唤着我,期待着我均匀地摇动它们。让它们身上包裹更丰富的米粉,缓缓地膨胀起来,丰满起来,变得洁白而蓬松,渐渐趋近成品。 委实有些决定不下。想写这个,那个又在诱惑。放下这个,又觉得于心不忍。后来我很坚决地对自己说,既然对我来说,哪个都敝帚自珍,就想一想更广大的人更迫切需要什么。我是一个视责任为天职的人。这样一比较,对于毒品的痛恨和有关生命的哲学思考,就凸现出来。也许是我作过多年医生的经历,同病人携手与死亡斗争,我无法容忍任何一丝对生命的漠视与.欺骗。也许是我在海拔5000米的藏北高原当兵的十几年生涯,使我痛感生命是那样宝贵与短暂,发誓永远珍爱保卫这单向的航程。 一位屡戒屡吸的女孩对我说,她是因为好奇加无知,才染上毒瘾的。我说,报上不是经常宣传吗,你为何置若罔闻她说,我们不看报,看了也不信。如果你能写一部非常好看的小说,让更多的人早点读到,也许可以救命。 我不相信文学有那么大的效力,就像我当医生的时候,不相信医学可以战胜死亡。但生命本身,就是明知不可为而为之的悲壮过程。我要用我手中的笔,与生命对话。 整个《红处方》的写作,是离开北京,在我母亲家完成的。有朋友问,你写作此书的时候,是否非常痛苦与沉重我说,不是。当我做好准备进入写作状态时,基本上心平气和。我知道要走到哪里去,何地迂回,何地直插,胸中大体有数。长篇小说是马拉松跑,如果边设计边施工,顿挫无序,是无法完成整体设计的。 每天早晨按时起床,稍许锻炼后,开始劳作,像一个赶早拾粪的老农。母亲为我做好了饭,我不吃,她也不吃。在这样的督促下,我顿顿准时吃得盆光碗净,好像幼儿园的小朋友。大约三个月后,初稿完成了。我把它养在电脑里,不去看,也不去想。又大约三个月后,最初的痕迹渐渐稀薄,再把初稿调出。陌生使人严格。看自己的东西,好像是看别人的东西,眼光沉冷起来,发现了许多破绽。能补的补,能缝的缝,当然最主要的是删节。删节真是个好帮手,能使弱处藏匿,主旨分明。 书出版后,很多电视台来联系改编电视剧的事,前后大约有几十家吧。天津电视台的导演和制片人,往返多次,同我谈他们对小说的理解,我被他们的诚意所感动。说,那我就把《红处方》托付给你们了,希望你们郑重地把这件事做好。我想表达对生命的悲悯与救赎。 文章末尾写到“很多电视台来联系改编电视剧的事,前后大约有几十家吧。天津电视台的导演和制片人,往返多次”,表现了作者怎样的情感这样写有什么作用(6分)
As a young bond trader, Buttonwood was given two pieces of advice, trading rules of thumb, if you will: that bad economic news is good news for bond markets and that every utterance dropping from the lips of Paul Volcker, the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the man who restored the central bank"s credibility by stomping on runaway inflation, should be respected than Pope"s orders. Today"s traders are, of course, a more sophisticated bunch. But the advice still seems good, apart from two slight drawbacks. The first is that the well-chosen utterances from the present chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, is of more than passing difficulty. 1 The second is that, of late, good news for the economy has not seemed to upset bond investors all that much.For all the cheer that has crackled down the wires, the yield on ten-year bonds—which you would expect to rise on good economic news—is now, at 4.2%, only two-fifths of a percentage point higher than it was at the start of the year. Pretty much unmoved, in other words.Yet the news from the economic front has been better by far than anyone could have expected. On Tuesday November 25th, revised numbers showed that America"s economy grew by an annual 8.2% in the third quarter, a full percentage point more than originally thought, driven by the ever-spendthrift American consumer and, for once, corporate investment. 2 Just about every other piece of information coming out from special sources shows the same strength.New houses are still being built at a fair clip. Exports are rising, for all the protectionist crying. Even employment, in what had been mocked as a jobless recovery, increased by 125,000 or thereabouts in September and October. 3 Rising corporate profits, low credit spreads and the biggest-ever rally in the junk-bond market do not, on the face of it, suggest anything other than a deep and long-lasting recovery.Yet Treasury-bond yields have fallen.If the rosy economic backdrop makes this odd, making it doubly odd is an apparent absence of foreign demand Foreign buyers of Treasuries, especially Asian certral banks, who had been swallowing American government debt like there was no tomorrow, seem to have had second thoughts lately. 4 In September, according to the latest available figures, foreigners bought only $5-6 billion of Treasuries, compared with$25.1 billion the previous month and an average of $38.7 billion in the preceding four months. 5 In an effort to keep a lid on the yen"s rise, the Japanese central bank is still busy buying dollars and parking the money in government debt.Just about everyboby else seems to have been selling.
A market is commonly thought of as a place where commodities are bought and sold. Thus fruit and vegetables are sold wholesale at Covent Garden Market and meat is sold wholesale at Smithfield Market. But there are markets for things other than commodities in the usual sense. 21 There are real estate markets, foreign exchange markets, labor markets, short-term capital markets and so on; there may be a market for anything which has a price.And there may be no particular place to which dealings are confined. 22 Buyers and sellers may be scattered over the whole world and instead of actually meeting together in a market-place they may deal with one another by telephone, telegram, cable or letter.Even if dealings are restricted to a particular place, the dealers may consist wholly or in part of agents acting on instructions from clients far away. Thus agents buy meat at Smithfield on behalf of retail butchers all over England; and brokers on the London Stock Exchange buy and sell securities on instructions from clients all over the world. 23 We must therefore define a market as an area over which buyers and sellers are in such close touch with one another either directly or through dealers, that the prices obtainable in one part of the market affect the prices paid in other parts. 24 Modern means of communication are so rapid that a buyer can discover what price a seller is ask in, g, and can accept it if he wishes, although he may be thousands of miles away.Thus the market for anything is, potentially, the whole world. But in fact things have, normally, only a local or national market.This may be because nearly the whole demand is concentrated in one locality. These special local demands, however, are of quite minor importance. 25 The main reason why many things have not a world market is that they are costly or difficult to transport.