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Do high sales reflect the power of advertising or the needs of consumers?
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July 24, 2012
3:20 pm
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Today, the high sales of popular consumer goods reflect the power of advertising and not the real needs of the society in which they are sold. To what extent do agree or disagree?


Some goods are really welcomed and purchased in large amount by customers today. To this phenomenon, some argue that this is the consequence of advertisement, and customers purchase these popular goods out of the influence of advertising, not out of their real needs. To some extend, I cannot agree with this argument.

As with the development of technology, there appear some novel goods for daily life, such as micro ovens, coffee machines and electronic products. All these products cannot be imagined several decades age, for in those days, people did work largely depending on manual labor. After the invention of these labor-saving equipments and facilities, complicated work can be easily done in few hours. Consequently, people tend to choose these time-saving goods, which sale in large amount. In addition, the high sales of popular consumer goods, in a certain respect, indicate life conditions of people. As we can see, most of the welcomed goods, presently, tend to be used for leisure. The promoted life standards stimulate people buy such kind of goods to release their life burden, which is also a real need of the high-pace society.

As for the advertisement, we must admit that they have a great impact on the customers’ habits of purchasing. However, it is only a catalyst instead of a magic trick that can create desires out of consumers. The function of advertising is to better the sales.

Above all, whatever the popular goods are, they must satisfy the demands of customers to achieve high sales, which cannot be realized by advertising.

July 30, 2012
7:48 am
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Hi Katherine and welcome to Writefix

Thanks for this essay. Please feel free to comment on other people's essays. Even a few words can be really encouraging!

The question asks if sales of popular consumer goods reflect the power of advertising or the real needs of the society. In your second paragraph, you have 135 words about different goods in our houses, but your third paragraph is only 46 words long.

It's better to balance your argument. Have a look at the official descriptors for IELTS Task 2 Writing (public version) here, under Task Response and look for the phrase "addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others" (Band 6) or "addresses the task only partiallly" (Band 5). You've done a good job of writing the correct word length (your essay is 273 words) but try to develop all your ideas fully.

If you spend too long describing the goods people use in their homes, there is also a danger that an examiner might start to think you were going off-topic.  What you wrote in Paragraph Two is relevant, but it needs to be tied to the question more.

Shorten/Simplify

You wrote a long (26-word) sentence here:

The promoted life standards stimulate people buy such kind of goods to release their life burden, which is also a real need of the high-pace society.

I’m not sure what this long sentence means.  There are too many ideas in it.

  • People want an easier life (5 words)
  • Today’s fast-paced society means that people crave convenience. (8 words)
  • As living standards rise, consumers want products that make their life easier. (12 words)

You have some good short sentences (“The function of advertising is to better the sales”) but your average sentence length is 18.3 words per sentence. Try to reduce this to between 12 and 15 words. The easiest way to do this is to add more short sentences.

Develop and support your ideas

You wrote:

However, it is only a catalyst instead of a magic trick that can create desires out of consumers.

I think this is a very good idea with some excellent vocabulary. But it needs far more support. Again, check the official descriptors for IELTS Task 2 Writing (public version) here, under Task Response, and look for the words “not sufficiently developed” or “inadequately developed.”  I am sure you want something higher than this!

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