文档介绍：中级口译听力教程第三版1A
An intermediate course of English listening Third edition
Unit one. Part one. Shopping over the .
3. Exercises.
1. Listen to a passage about a new mode of shopping, and then choose the correct answer to each question you hear.
In 2005 consumers could purchase virtually anything over the , books, compact discs, and even stocks were available from World Wide Web sites that seem to spring up almost daily. A few years earlier some people had predicted that consumers accustomed to shopping in stores would be reluctant to buy things that they could not see or touch in person. For growing number of time starved consumers however, shopping from their puter was proving to be a convenient alternative to driving to the store. A research estimated that in 2008 US consumers would purchase billion dollars of goods over the , double the 2006 total. Finding a bargain was getting easier owing to the rise of online auctions, and websites that parison shopping on the for the best deal. For all the consumer interest, retailing in cyber space was still a largely unprofitable business however. pioneer which began selling books in 1995 and later branched into recorded music and videos posted revenue of million dollars, in the third quarter of this year, up from million dollars in the same period of 2002. Overall however, pany’s loss widened to million dollars from million dollars. An analyst did not expect pany to turn a profit until 2006. Despite the great loss, has a stock market value of many billions, reflecting investors’ optimism of other future industry. retailing appeal to investors because it provided an efficient means of reaching millions of consumers without having the cost of operating conventional stores with their armies of sales people. Selling online carries its own risks however. With so peting for consumers’ attention petition was intense and profit margins thin or non-existent. One video retailer sold the hit movie Tit