Passage 1
The term “quality” is one of the most misused in the business world. What exactly does it mean? Our grandparents would have been in no doubt. Quality meant excellence: a thing was the best of its kind, and that was that. In business, however, the word has acquired a very different meaning: consistency, a lack of defects.
Around 1970, it is said, a group of investment analysts visited a world-famous UK engineering company. They asked the questions of their trade: about profit margins, stock control and balance sheets. The company’s executives did not see the point of all this. Their products were the finest in the world. Why all these detailed questions about numbers?
Rolls Royce, the company in question, duly went bust in 1973. The trouble with old-style quality was that it encouraged supply-driven management. The engineers would make the product to the highest possible standard and price it accordingly. If the public was so uncultured that they turned it down, so much the worse for the public. It was all very well for artists to produce masterpieces. The job of companies was to please the market.
Quality has a third meaning: that of value for money. To qualify for that meaning, a product must be of certain standard; and it should convey a sense, not of outright cheapness, but of being sold at a fair price.
The US fast foods group McDonald’s, for instance, talks of its ‘high quality food’. But at 99c or 99p, its hamburgers are as close to absolute cheapness as any person in the developed world could desire. They are also highly consistent. Eat a McDonald’s anywhere around the world and the results will be roughly similar. But as anyone who has eaten a really good American hamburger knows, a McDonald’s is also a long way from quality in its original sense.
43.Nowadays, quality means consistency and cheap price.
A、True
B、False
【正确答案】：B
【名师解析】:根据文章内容，"quality"一词在商业世界中具有多重含义。最初，它代表卓越，即同类中最好的。然而，在商业领域，它逐渐演变成了一致性和无缺陷。文章还提到了"quality"的第三种含义，即物有所值，这要求产品不仅要达到一定标准，还要以合理的价格出售。文章中提到了麦当劳，它以低价和一致性著称，但与"quality"最初的意义相比，麦当劳的汉堡并不是真正的高质量。
题目中的说法是："现如今，质量意味着一致性和便宜的价格。" 这与文章中对"quality"的第三种含义的描述相符。然而，文章并没有说这是"quality"的唯一含义，只是提到了它是其中一种含义。因此，题目的说法是片面的，因为它忽略了"quality"可能还有其他含义，比如卓越。所以，题目的答案是B，False。
