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考研英语阅读理解有一部分是截取自报刊文章,因此考生在复习备考的过程中要注意提高报刊文章的阅读能力,把握时事阅读。下面新东方在线小编分享历年真题同源的30篇报刊文章,附有注释和解析,希望考生认真阅读,提高对此类文章的阅读能力和增加相关词汇量。
考研英语阅读真题同源报刊文章30篇(25)
Car retailing
If there was ever an industry vulnerable to technological change, it would
have to be selling cars in America. For decades a franchise network made up of
thousands of dealers has peddled ordinary cars as though they were exotic goods
in a Moroccan souk. Each dealer seems to have his own opaque pricing scheme,
consumers have to endure endless haggling and the financing is murky at best.
Small wonder, then, that the shifty car salesman has became such a
stereotype.
A decade ago a few brave souls tried to use the emerging power of the
internet to modernise this fragmented and frustrating business. Scott Painter, a
Californian entrepreneur, founded Cars Direct in an attempt to sell vehicles
direct to consumers online. But the business failed to work as he had hoped, and
he eventually left the company.
Hope springs eternal, at least where the internet is concerned. This week
Mr. Painter is launching Zag, his latest attempt to modernise automobile
retailing using the internet. His first big customer is Capital One, a financial
giant that is one of the country’s biggest providers of car loans. Meanwhile,
Auto Nation, the country’s largest car retailer (with over 300 dealerships), is
launching Smart Choice, its own internet marketingscheme, in June.
So is the time finally ripe? Glenn Mercer of McKinsey, a consultancy,
believes that internet sales efforts, even fixed price schemes, will not save
customers much money because the internet firms by law cannot buy cars directly
from manufacturers; they must get them from dealers. Brian Reed of Capital One
retorts: "It’s true, we may not offer the lowest pricebut we will offer a fair
price with a lot less pain."
But the pain is not always so easy to escape. Visit many online sites to
research a car, and they will sell your name immediately to local dealerships
which will then harass you in the oldfashioned way.
Still, there are reasons to think that conditions may finally be favoring
online sales. J.D. Power and Associates, a research firm, reckons that
twothirds of new car customers use the internet for research, up from a quarter
in 1998. Auto Nation reports that car sales originating on the internet have
increased from 14% of its total in 2002 to about a quarter last year. Because
price transparency is squeezing margins, argues Sid De Boer of Lithia, one of
the country’s biggest car retailers, dealers are now desperate to find ways that
the internet can help them. He is convinced that online sales of new cars will
soar from nothing to a quarter of Lithia’s total within a decade.
So will all this mean the death of the salesman? Do not count on it says
Mike Jackson, the boss of Auto Nation. His firm has already cut in half the time
taken to buy a car, and it wants to cut it in half again by automating various
bits of paperwork. But Mr. Jackson is convinced that consumers will always want
to kick the tyres on their new car, before they sign on the dotted line: We’ll
put the distasteful parts online, and leave the fun part-it’s like going to a
candy store.
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