Now, I start to read the Unit 6. From the title, I know what the author wants to say. And the topic, an interesting one, relates to my major—Business administration. I desire to read it to get some useful information.
The first paragraph talks about the customers’ attitudes about advertisement. I want to talk about the word ‘consumerland’. As soon as I read the unfamiliar word, I look it up in the dictionary, but I can’t find out the explanation of the word. I guess the meaning of it and find that it should refer to ‘consumer’. When I put the words ‘inhabitants of’ and ‘consumerland’ together, I get the answer. The phrase ‘inhabitant of consumerland’, I guess, means ‘consumers’. I stop reading at the word ‘sophisticated’ to think why the author uses this word after ‘of’. As I know, we must use a noun after ‘of’, but ‘sophisticated’ is an adjective. Does the author make a mistake?
While I begin the second paragraph, I consider who advertisers know better than and what the advertisers are compared with. Obviously, advertisers know the consumers’ attitudes about advertising than consumers themselves. I feel puzzled again when I read words ‘conscious awareness’. I know the word ‘conscious’ refers to ‘aware’, so the word is unnecessary to be put here. Moreover, I learn a special phrase ‘all but’, and it is equal to ‘all except’ from the reference.
In the next paragraph, I feel confused at the third sentence. I find two verbs in this sentence—‘is’ and ‘used’. My English teacher always reminds us that a sentence should have only one predicate. Then I guess there is ‘who’ before ‘used’, and ‘who’ is omitted. But why could ‘who’ be omitted? I think I need the English teacher’s help. From this paragraph, the grammar and words draw slight attention to me, and the main importance is the idea to make advertisements more effectively and efficiently and know which part of people is the main AdMan’s attack.
After I read the following paragraph, I mention the consumers’ attitudes of advertising, and I know why the customers have such attitudes. Many people don’t believe the advertising claim. The adman uses many ways to increase people’s purchase of products, even using lies. Now I doubt the meaning why advertisement exists.
In Paragraph 5, I recognize a new phrase—‘parity products’. I summarize its meaning that is ‘the similar products’. Meanwhile, I know who the adman’s main clients are and why so many consumers hate the advertisements which are now very popular. The last sentence of this paragraph is hard to understand. After I read the translation of this article, I get its explanation (The advertising fees take up the main budgets in the company of the parity products).
The nest two paragraphs are the introductions of the two rules of parity claims. firstly, I read the beginning of the sixth paragraph with confusion about the ‘better’ and ‘best’, then I feel surprised why the ‘better’ is better than ‘best’ in the claims. In my opinion, the adman should use ‘best’ in the advertising claims to tell consumers how outstanding about the products. The author cites some examples to justify why ‘better’ is better than ‘best’ in advertising claims. And I get the main idea about the other rule of advertising claims in Paragraph 7. But I don’t know the relation between the second sentence and its next part in this paragraph, although I can judged that the latter is the example of the former by the sentence structure. I search the answer from many books. But I don’t get it.
Paragraph 8 is the prediction of the next part in this article.
