Task 5
Directions: There is an article below. After rending it, you should give brief answers to the 5 questions (No. 56 to No. 60) that follow. The answers (in not more than 3 words) should be written after the corresponding numbers on the Answer Sheet.
The market investigation is indispensable to sales promotion. They are as closely related as the lips and teeth. What you produce is for sale on the market. It would be impossible to succeed in selling a product without investigating the market first. In the international market, goods on sale coming from countries and suppliers are always facing fierce competition. Under such circumstances, they will try everything possible to familiarize themselves with the market conditions.
In making investigations, we ought to get information about what similar items the competitors are offering on the market, what prices they are quoting, what features their products have, who are their regular customers, etc.
Then, how can we obtain such information There are many channels we can make use of in doing this sort of work. The commercial counselor’s offices of our embassies stationed abroad can help us in making market investigations. Nowadays, our import and export corporations send their trade groups abroad quite often. One of their purposes is to make market survey on the spot. Certainly, face-to-face talks with foreign businessman are important channels to get market information. The Chinese Export Commodities Fairs and some other fair of similar nature as well as visits of foreign businessman provide us with such opportunity.
What is the role of market investigation in sales promotion It is ______ .