单选题 The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional "paid" media-such as television commercials and print advertisements-still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create " earned media" by willingly promoting it to friends, and company may leverage "owned" media by sending E-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. In fact, the way consumers now approach the process of making purchase decisions means that marketing's impact stems from a broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.
Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initiator for users' responses. But in some cases, one marketer's owned media become another marketer's paid media-for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend , which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies' marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.
The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them.
If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company's response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well- orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

单选题 Consumers may create "earned" media when they are ______.
A. obsessed with online shopping at certain Web sites
B. inspired by product-promoting E-mails sent to them
C. eager to help their friends promote quality products
D. enthusiastic about recommending their favorite products

单选题 According to Paragraph 2, sold media feature ______.
A. a safe business environment B. random competition
C. strong user traffic D. flexibility in organization

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 细节推断题。定位到第2段第4句“We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-ecommerce engines within that environment”，由此句可知收费媒体(sold media)是指那些流量非常大的免费媒体，由于它们的流量如此之大以至于其他机构也乐于把自己的产品信息或者电子商务引擎置于这些免费媒体中，于是就会向免费媒体购买广告位置(结合本段第3句理解)，由此可知选项C：strong user traffic(大用户流量)为正确答案。干扰项：A：a safe business environment(安全的商业环境)，B：random competition(自由竞争)，D：flexibility in organization(组织灵活)均非文中信息，元中生有。

单选题 The author indicates in Paragraph 3 that earned media ______.
A. invite constant conflicts with passionate consumers
B. can be used to produce negative effects in marketing
C. may be responsible for fiercer competition
D. deserve all the negative comments about them

单选题 Toyota Motor's experience is cited as an example of ______.
A. responding effectively to hijacked media
B. persuading customers into boycotting products
C. cooperating with supportive consumers
D. taking advantage of hijacked media

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 例证题。定位到末段，末段主要提到热情的消费者可能会号召其他人抵制某个产品，威胁到产品所属公司的名声，这时公司的回应有可能不够迅速、周到。这是本段的核心信息。接下来就拿Toyota Motor举例，举例中提到这个公司在公司名声遇到如上提到的危机情况时做出的反应，且成功减轻了危害程度。由此可知，例子是对本段中心句的一个反面例子论证公司对hijacked media的反应。故选项A(有效地回应被劫持利用的媒体)为正确答案。