大学体验英语课文阅读

C) Ivory Soap is eatable and doesn't even taste all that bad.

D) Proctor & Gamble keeps a precise count of the bars of Ivory Soap having been sold. 阅读完这篇文章，你都学到哪些词汇和短语了呢？总结一下吧：

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Passage Six

Haier Seeks Cool U.S. Image

NEW YORK, Aug 2 (Reuters) — For most American shoppers, \still suggest cheap toys, but China's largest household appliance maker has

ambitious plans to change that with its sales of a growing range of sleek minibars. Haier Group Co., which according to some industry estimates is the world's second-biggest maker of refrigerators, is seeking to outflank America's three major appliance makers by competing on image rather than price, and by targeting students in the hope that they will remain loyal as they get older.

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And so far the strategy, which may signal the way for future campaign in the U.S. market by other Chinese consumer products companies, may be working — at least according to two arms of the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

\spokeswoman for Wal-Mart's Sam's Club, whose last holiday season catalog featured a black Haier cooler with smoked glass doors that is big enough to chill 30 bottles of wine.

\luxury machine, sold along with the more ordinary Haier chest freezer that costs about $160.

Wal-Mart's main discount operation in April began selling the chest freezers in half of its 2,600 stores, while most of its stores sell at least one of two versions of compact refrigerators made by Haier.

\spokesman Rob Phillips, who added that the Haier 4.6 cubic feet and 5 cubic feet freezers cost about the same as General Electric Co.'s comparable products, selling for around $169.

COLLEGE TOEHOLD

GE, Whirlpool Corp. and Maytag Corp. currently dominate the U.S. marketplace for household appliances but they tend to focus most of their attention on mainstream areas such as large refrigerators and freezers.

Haier, which says it currently sells $200 million worth of appliances in the U.S. annually, now claims more than a 35 percent share of the U.S. market for

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refrigerators 4 cubic feet and smaller — the minibars found in hotels and college dormitories.

\kids using our little refrigerators grow up and marry, we want them to be thinking of us for their first fridge,\president, who was Haier's first U.S. distributor before setting up the unit in 1999.

Haier may need to depend less on the Chinese market because it is likely to face an increasing challenge on its own turf. China's entry into the World Trade

Organization will open up Chinese manufacturers to greater foreign competition at home.

Haier, which had global revenues of $5 billion last year, spent $30 million setting up a plant late last year in Camden, South Carolina that will make large Haier brand refrigerators. Company officials say they hope initiatives like that will grow U.S. sales to $1 billion by 2004.

\curve in the U.S., and then picking up niche markets,\Administration at the University of Virginia and the author of a new book, Inside Chinese Business.

BROADWAY HEADQUARTERS

The company, whose Chief Executive Zhang Ruimin is famous in China for being filmed smashing sub-standard products with a hammer, last week bought a historical bank building on Broadway in Manhattan for $14 million.

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\Jemal. \have.\

In the third quarter of 2002, for example, the company plans to launch stainless steel Internet-linked appliances with Flash Gordon stylings, such as a home clothes washing machine that can be started via the Internet, he said.

To grow its brand in the U.S., the company has taken out ad space on a

case-by-case basis on trolley cars at JFK International Airport in New York and on billboards in Miami and Chicago, but has not yet contracted with any of the big advertising firms. And Haier America is not only battling rival appliance makers in the U.S. — it is also manufacturing for some of them. Haier America does about 20 to 25 percent of its manufacturing on a contract basis for other companies, including big U.S. competitors, who sell its products under their own brand names.

Choose the best answer to each question with the information from the passage. 1. What is the main idea of the passage?

A) Haier refrigerators and freezers are becoming more and more popular with American college students.

B) The old idea that Chinese products in America are mainly cheap toys no longer exists because of Haier's efforts.

C) Using its own strategies, Haier is gradually building its brand name in the American market.

D) Haier's successful strategy signals the way other Chinese companies should take for their future campaigns in the U.S. market.

2. Which of the following best explains the subtitle of the second part - \

A) Haier aims at U.S. college students in the hope that they will become its future employees.

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