No question about it, consumers do buy some grocery store products on impulse. (51) The peaches at my favorite fruit store looked so luscious one week that I bought a dozen even though peaches weren't on my shopping list. Though impulse buying does account for some extra sales, it seems to me that in our enthusiasm over it, we are ignoring a far more important kind of buying which accounts for far greater sales volume.(52) It is what I call reflex buying. the buying of products on which we have been pre-sold through advertising.(53) How many bottles of Wesson Oil (威森食用油)could have been sold from displays suggesting vegetable oil for cakes if widespread advertising had not sold us on a new method of making light, delicious cakes with vegetable oil as shortening?How many cans of Glass Wax could displays have sold without the extensive advertising that convinced us that here was a new and easy way to keep windows shining?How long would it take to get acceptance for cake mixes through displays if advertising had not convinced us that cake mixes make top quality cakes in a jiffy?A woman may have forgotten that she needs soap until the display in the store reminds her. But what is it that influences her to buy the brand of soap she chooses?Reports tell us that 53.9% of all grocery store purchases are based on decisions made in the store. But should not the products under analysis be divided in two classifications ——branded merchandise and unbranded merchandise?(54) Fresh meat and produce, for example, are for the most part unbranded, and they vary in quality and price, so that a woman naturally will withhold her decision until she can look over the offerings. If the liver looks good, she buys it. If it looks dull and not too fresh, she may buy pork instead. Perhaps her husband likes tomatoes, but if the tomatoes are wilted while the potatoes are fresh, she may buy potatoes.But in considering branded, packaged products where quality is stable, and price does not fluctuate as much as with meat and produce, the shopper's decision usually is made long before she enters the store.Any woman will tell you that while she is thumbing through a magazine or newspaper or listening to the radio or watching TV, the thoughts that flash through her mind concerning the products she sees and hears advertised run along like this."Hmm, frozen lemon juice in cans. How easy. Birdseye. Their frozen products are so good. Must try some."“Well, well. Aluminium foil wrapped around a roast keeps the juices in and makes meat more tender. Sounds sensible. Guess I'll try that someday.""Now that certainly saves work! Paper towels instead of a cloth to wipe meat before cooking ...to wipe off the fixtures and the sink ... to hold peelings and scraps when preparing vegetables.”The fact that more and more women carry incomplete shopping lists or no lists at all merely proves how well merchandise now is displayed. Women know that in modem grocery stores they readily see everything that is there, and that they will be reminded of the products they need. Why bother with a shopping list? When products were hidden under counters, shopping lists were necessary. Now that everything is displayed on open shelves, shopping lists are not as important.And so when today's women, frequently without a shopping list, saunters up and down the aisles of her grocery store and buys Birdseye lemon juice and Reynolds aluminium foil and Scott Towels, it is not an on-the-moment impulse that causes that purchase. It is a mental reflex. She was 8nvinced while reading the advertising about these products that they were good and would supply a need in her life. She decided then to buy them. She did not add them to a shopping list because she knew she would find them displayed on open shelves as she walked through the grocery store.When she took from the shelf or from a display, she was acting not on impulse but by reflex.(55) Consumers often show preference for products that advertising first influenced them to try, that gave them satisfaction when they were tried, and that are continuously advertised with reminders to re-buy. It is this consumer preference that makes grocers across the country weed out slow-moving items, reduce each line to the two or three brands most in demand and forget the eight or ten slow moving brands in that line. Grocery store managers have displayed the means and the authority to make displays of any of the 2,000 or more products they carry, but they have learned from experience that a display alone will not sell a product no matter how low the price or how big the display. The consumer must be pre-sold on the use of that product.A: Answer the following questions according to your understanding of the passage. (10%)
What do you think is the main idea of this passage?
【正确答案】：Main idea: Reflex buying plays a more important role than impulse buying in consumer’s shopping.
