TOEFL Speaking Task 4 Practice Test #1

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a business class.

Professor: So recently we’ve been looking at how consumers make decisions about which products to buy. Let’s consider how consumers feel when making a big purchase. When a product they’re thinking about buying is something expensive, often people feel that they are taking a chance, spending a lot of money on something when they aren’t really sure how good the product is. So to reduce this feeling of risk, consumers use specific strategies to help them make purchasing decisions.

One strategy to reduce the feeling of risk is doing thorough research to find out as much information as possible about a product before buying it. By collecting information from many sources, the consumer gets a sense of whether a product is likely to perform well. For example, imagine that someone wants a new computer. But deciding which computer to buy feels risky, because they could end up with a bad computer. So by taking time to read online reviews from experts about different manufacturers and listening to the opinions of many people who have computers, the individual will often feel safer making the decision about which computer is best.

Another strategy consumers use to reduce the feeling of risk is staying loyal to one particular brand or company. When consumers have purchased products from a company and have experienced satisfaction with those products, they will trust the company and feel confident buying from it again. For example, let’s say a family buys a new car from a particular company, and the car performs very well and lasts a long time. Well, the next time they go to buy a car, they’ll decide to use that same company, because they trust that they’ll have another positive experience.