TOEFL Speaking Task 3 Practice 020Science

TOEFL Speaking Task 3 Practice #020 - Science

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Reading passage

Signaling Customers are often prepared to spend more on products they believe to be of high quality; however, accurately judging quality can be difficult without expert knowledge. When buyers are uncertain about a product's quality and whether it justifies the price, they are often hesitant to make a purchase. This issue can be addressed through a strategy known as signaling. In signaling, the seller communicates or provides evidence to the buyer that the product is indeed high quality. A common method involves obtaining an independent evaluation-an impartial assessment from a third party not connected to the seller-to verify the product's value.

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Listening transcript

Narrator:Now listen to part of a lecture in a Business class.

Professor:So OK, here's a good example. A friend of mine owns a small jewelry store where she sells jewelry. And the jewelry she sells-watches, rings, necklaces-is very expensive, thousands of dollars, because it's all real gold, real diamonds and other precious gemstones. So, of course, when customers come into her store, well, if they are considering spending that much money on a piece of jewelry, they want to make sure it's authentic-that the gold is real, that the gemstones are real and not just pieces of glass. But most customers don't actually know how to tell the difference on their own. So in order to reassure her customers, what my friend did is she had a jewelry expert come in and look at all the jewelry in her store. This expert had like twenty years of experience examining jewelry, so he knew a lot about it. And the expert examined all the precious gemstones and certified that they were authentic-real. And then my friend put up a sign in the store saying that all the jewellery in the store had been certified as authentic by a leading expert. So her customers would see this sign and know that all the jewelry in the store was real. And since the expert didn't work for my friend's store, it didn't matter to him if the jewelry got sold or not. So customers were likely to trust his opinion. The expert was therefore able to provide evidence that the jewelry was worth the high prices.

Your speaking task

Explain Signaling and how the example from the lecture illustrates the concept.

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