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  3. With increasing prosperity, Western European youth is having a fling that is creating distinctive consumer and cultural patterns

With increasing prosperity, Western European youth is having a fling that is creating distinctive consumer and cultural patterns

admin2010-04-30  54
问题     With increasing prosperity, Western European youth is having a fling that is creating distinctive consumer and cultural patterns. The result has been the increasing emergence in Europe of that phenomenon well known in America as the "youth market". This is a market in which enterprising businesses cater to the demands of teenagers and older youths in all their rock mania and pop-art forms.
    In Western Europe, the youth market may appropriately be said to be in its infancy. In some countries such as Britain, West Germany and France, it is more advanced than in others. Characteristics of the evolving European youth market indicate dissimilarities as well as similarities to the American youth market.
    The market’s basis is essentially the same more spending power and freedom to use in the hands of teenagers and older youth. Young consumers also make up an increasingly high proportion of the population. As in the United States, youthful tastes in Europe extend over a similar range of products  records and record players, transistor radios, leather jackets and "way out" extravagantly-styled clothing, cosmetics and soft drinks. Generally it is now difficult to tell in which direction trans-Atlantic teenage influences are flowing. Also, a pattern of conformity dominates European youth as in this country, though in Britain the object is to wear clothes that "make the wearer stand out" but also make him "in", such as tight trousers and precisely-tailored jackets.
   Worship and emulation of "idols" in the entertainment field, especially the pop singers and other performers are pervasive. There is also the same exuberance and unpredictability in sudden fad switches. In Paris, buyers of stores catering to the youth market carefully watch what dress is being worn by a popular television teenage singer to be ready for a sudden demand for copies. In Stockholm other followers of teenage fads call the youth market "attractive but irrational".
    The most obvious difference between the youth market in Europe and that in the United States is in size. In terms of volume and variety of sales, the market in Europe is only a shadow of its American counterpart, but it is a growing shadow.
    But there are also these important dissimilarities generally with American youth market: In the European youth market, unlike that of the United States, it is the working youth who provides the bulk of purchasing power.
    On the average, the school-finishing age still tends to be 14 years. This is the maximum age to which compulsory education extends, and with Europe’s industrial manpower shortage, thousands of teenage youths may soon attain incomes equal in many cases to that of their fathers. Working youth, consequently, are the big spenders in the European youth market, but they also have less leisure than those staying on at school, who in mm have less buying power
What is the passage mainly about?
选项 A、The distinctive consumer and cultural patterns among youth in Western Europe.
B、The comparison between the features of youth markets in Europe and America.
C、The high proportion young consumers account for both in Europe and America.
D、The immature and under-developed youth market in Western Europea.
答案B
解析
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