首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
考研
Tesco is the closest thing that Europe has to Wal-Mart. The U. K. ’s leading food and household-goods retailer sells everything
Tesco is the closest thing that Europe has to Wal-Mart. The U. K. ’s leading food and household-goods retailer sells everything
admin
2015-04-10
70
问题
Tesco is the closest thing that Europe has to Wal-Mart. The U. K. ’s leading food and household-goods retailer sells everything from bananas to banking services, all at low prices. Two weeks ago the chain added yet another product to its massive lineup-phone calls. Tesco won’t be the first European retailer to provide Internet phone services to its customers. But it will be the biggest. What’s more, Tesco isn’t trying to make money selling phone calls. It’s going to use cheap phone calls to sell you the things it actually does make money on—like clothing, food and household goods.
1. The rise of voice-over-Internet services
Welcome to the 21st-century telecommunications business. It’s a place in which pretty much anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can become your phone company. How did this happen? One word—VoIP. That’s "voice over Internet protocol" for the uninitiated, and it’s what companies like Skype and Vonage have been offering for a while now. VoIP turns your voice into just another form of digital data that can be sent through the Internet.
2. Big telecoms are suffering
The shift is beginning to hit national telecoms and multinational mobile-phone companies. Just look at the last several months’ worth of profit warnings at companies like France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and, most important, Vodafone, the largest mobile carrier in the world. It derives 80% of its revenue from voice, compared with an average of 55% for European telecoms, and is thus particularly vulnerable to the rise of voice-over-Internet services.
3. Phone services tend to be free
While the telecommunications giants are suffering for a variety of reasons, the underlying problem is the same. Normally, products in highly competitive mass markets eventually become cheap cyclical commodities, which is what is happening to cell phones and all manner of consumer electronics.
4. Companies are offering cheap or free Internet phone services
Over the last year or so, Google, Microsoft, ATT, AOL, British Telecom and hundreds of other companies of all kinds have launched VoIP services.
5. A new form of marketing
In a world where the phone is a staple of daily life, providing this service becomes a new way to connect to customers, an intimate form of marketing.
The commercial possibilities don’t stop there. Because once a customer is given his special handset and VoIP software, Tesco has made the leap from the grocery cart to the digital hub of the home. And in the Internet age, that’s where the money is. Once a company like Tesco is in your home, it can help you manage all sorts of things digitally— what you watch, who you speak to, what you buy, how your fridge gets stocked.
[A]But the ease of establishing Internet connections is pushing phone services beyond the commodity graveyard toward the purgatory of marketing giveaways, like those plastic toys that come free with your kids’ Happy Meal.
[B]"Tesco is a big and trusted brand, "notes Ovum telecom analyst Mark Main. "You buy your groceries from them, and maybe even have a Tesco credit card. So why not trust them to deliver your phone service?" That service becomes either a new way to get customers into the store, or to cement their loyalty. This is not only about simplifying phone services for people, but also about getting them used to the Tesco range of products and services, "says commercial manager Alex Freudmann, who is heading up the company’s Internet phone service.
[C]Witness the huge number of media and technology mergers and acquisitions over the last several months, most of them done with an eye to convergence. The largest deals included the SBC buyout of AT&T.
[D]For consumers, that means cheap or even free telephone calls. For companies, it means that phone services are no longer the purview of Ma Bell, BT or France Telecom. Anybody from cable conglomerates to media firms to retailers to garage start-ups can handle your voice traffic.
[E]In the U. K. , the major electronics retailer Dixons has a service; one Italian newspaper now sells phone calls. Like Tesco, all these companies are offering cheap phone connections as a way to lure you into buying their other products and services.
[F]Largely as a result, Vodafone has seen its share price fall 17% over the last six months.
选项
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/lP74777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
Thefollowingparagraphsaregiveninawrongorder.ForQuestions41-45,youarerequiredtoreorganizetheseparagraphsintoa
Inthesetimeswhenmarketforcesappearincreasinglycomplicatedandmorevolatile,itisallthemoreimportanttounderstand
Inthefollowingtext,somesentenceshavebeenremoved.ForQuestions41-45,choosethemostsuitableonefromthelist(A、B、C、
ThebirthplaceofLeonardoismentionedinthetextThevideoscreatedbyDoughAitkenisusedtoshowacombinationof
Intheearly1800s,groupsofEnglishworkerswreckedmachinesthattheyfeltthreatenedtheirjobs.(46)Theywerecalled"Ludd
Thefollowingparagraphsaregiveninawrongorder.ForQuestions41-45,youarerequiredtoreorganizetheseparagraphsintoa
Themaindifferencebetweenthemodemsuperfarmanddiversifiedfarmsis______Itcanbeseenfromthepassagethattheproblem
Aspartofastudentsocialsurveyproject,youareleadingagrouptovisitanexhibitioninasmalltown.Writealetter;1)a
PLUSloansareapprovedforsomeparentswhocannotaffordtorepaythem,severalcollegefinancialaidofficersandfinancially
[A]Thesceneoccursveryneartheendofwhatmaybethebestsportsnoveleverwritten,EndZone,byDonDeLillo.Thehero,col
随机试题
编辑小郑需要对一篇有关财务软件应用的书稿“Word素材.docx”进行排版,请按下列要求完成书稿编排工作。书稿中有若干表格及图片,分别在表格上方和图片下方的说明文字左侧添加形如“表1.1”“表2.1”“图1.1”“图2.1”的题注,其中连字符“.”前面
某4段的流水处理机需要7拍才能完成某一个工作,其预约表如下所示。写出延迟禁止表、冲突向量。
患者,女性,23岁,发热、乏力、浮肿、尿少1个月,既往有光过敏史、时有关节肿痛,辅助检查显示中等量蛋白尿,镜下血尿,双侧胸腔中等量积液,血抗Sm抗体(+)患者男性,28岁,持续性镜下血尿2个月,每于上感或劳累后加重,肾活检示肾小球系膜区以IgA为主的免
甲为债权人,乙为债务人,乙应当于2004年8月1日在丙地向甲交付甲所有的一幅字画。但期间届至后,乙并没有履行。经查明,乙将该字画赠给了丙。甲遂向人民法院提起撤销权之诉。在该诉讼中,下列说法正确的有:
下列业务事项中,不会引起资产和负债同时变化的有()。
某市钢铁生产企业为增值税一般纳税人,注册资金9000万元,主营钢铁铸造。2010年2月向当地主管税务机关报送的2009年有关经营情况和纳税情况如下:(1)销售钢铁收入8000万元;(2)销售成本5000万元,其中一部分是利用从废旧物资回收公
员工援助计划在问题诊断阶段主要关注的层面包括()。
以下不属于“春秋五霸”的是()。
在大连国税系统兴起业务学习的风尚,现在你局也要组织一次学习,领导交给你办,你打算怎么做?
有一个虚拟页式存储管理系统,分配给某个进程3个页框(假设开始时页框为空)。某进程执行时的页面访问序列是:0,6,0,1,5,1,5,4,1,2,5,2,4,5,2,3,5,3。若采用最佳页面置换算法(OPT),缺页次数为()次。
最新回复
(
0
)