In the listening, the speaker casts doubt on the reading passage’s argument that advertisements provide a valuable service to individuals, society, and the nation. The speaker maintains that the reading is somewhat wrong, less convincing, and quite over generalized, providing several reasons.
First of all, the reading insists that advertisements are good for individual consumers due to information from them because they let consumers know what are the new products and services, where to buy them and how to use them. However, the speaker refutes that argument by saying that most advertisements give misinformation to consumers. He claims that because objective of advertisements is only to sell their products, they cannot help but giving misinformation that may exaggerate their products’ strengths and promotional information. Therefore, consumers get the information that they do not really want.
The second point the author made is that advertisements are good for the society because they allow the people to enjoy, with cheap fees, the contents of media through the income from the advertisement. Differently from this, the speaker insists that the more expensive the advertisements are, the more expensive the prices of their product, resulting in consumers loss after all. He takes an example of Superball’s commercial film in order to explain that how much fortunes are expended into expensive advertisements. Two million dollars per 30 second advertisement cannot be reasonable, which is consequently passed to the consumers' burdens.
Finally, although the reading mentions that advertisement are good for the national interest because they promotes the exports, the speaker stresses that advertisements have a negative influence on nation’s economy. He says that the excessive advertisements force consumers to buy products and services to the point where they pay for them on credit. He argues that this phenomenon is not good for the national economical health in the long term. |