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Online Shopping Reading Answers
Sayantani Barman logo

Sayantani Barman

Experta en el extranjero

Online Shopping Reading Answers contains 6 questions, and it is a topic belonging to the assessment system of IELTS general reading test. Online Shopping Reading Answers has been taken from book called New Insight into IELTS. In IELTS reading section, the nature of questions is such that candidates have to read a passage and provide answers from therein, it is to be attempted within 20 minutes. Online Shopping Reading Answers contains the questions that ask the candidates to find information from the passage and ascertain their veracity. To practice more reading papers like that the candidates can refer to IELTS practice test.

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Section 1

Read the passage to answer the questions that follow

Online Shopping Reading Answers

Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to unswervingly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among supplementary vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of diverse computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.

An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a regular "bricks-and-mortar" retailer or shopping centre; the procedure is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. When an online store is set up to enable businesses to buy from other businesses, the process is called business-to-business (B2B) online shopping. A typical online store enables the customer to peruse the firm's range of products and services, view photos or images of the products, along with information about the product specifications, features, and prices.

Online stores usually enable shoppers to use "search" features to find specific models, brands, or items. Online customers must have access to the Internet and a valid technique of payment in order to complete a transaction, such as a credit card, an Interac-enabled debit card, or a service such as PayPal. For physical products (e.g., paperback books or clothes), the e-tailer ships the goods to the customer; for digital products, such as digital audio files of songs or software, the retailer usually sends the file to the customer over the Internet. The largest of these online retailing corporations are Alibaba, Amazon.com, and eBay.

As the revenues from online sales continued to grow significantly, investigators identified different types of online shoppers, Rohm & Swaninathan identified four categories and named them "convenience shoppers, variety seekers, balanced buyers, and store-oriented shoppers". They focused on shopping motivations and found that the variety of products available and the perceived convenience of the buying online experience were significant motivating factors. This was different for offline shoppers, who were more motivated by time saving and recreational motives.

English entrepreneur Michael Aldrich was a pioneer of online shopping in 1979. His system connected a modified domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line. He believed that videotex, the modified domestic TV technology with a simple menu-driven human-computer interface, was a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium, the first from the time when the invention of the telephone happened. This enabled 'closed' corporate information systems to be opened to 'outside' correspondents not just for transaction processing but also for e- messaging and information retrieval and dissemination, later known as e-business.

His definition of the new mass communications medium as 'participative' [interactive, many-to-many] was essentially different from the traditional definitions of mass communication and mass media and a precursor to the social networking on the Internet 25 years later. In March 1980 he launched Redifon's Office Revolution, which allowed consumers, customers, agents, distributors, suppliers, and service companies to be connected on-line to the corporate systems and allow business transactions to be completed electronically in real-time. During the 1980s he designed, mass- produced, sold, installed, maintained, and reinforced many online shopping systems, using videotex technology. These systems which also provided voice response and handprint processing pre-date the Internet and the World Wide Web, the IBM PC, and Microsoft MS-DOS, and were installed mainly in the UK by large corporations.

Section 2

Questions 21-26

Do the following Statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

Choose

TRUE, if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE, if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN, if there is no information on this

  1. Online shopping allows customers to compare products from auxiliary merchants

Answer: TRUE
Supporting Sentence: Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among supplementary vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers.
Keyword: shopping, vendors
Keyword Location: Paragraph 1, 4th line
Explanation: The word Auxiliary means supplementary and merchants means vendor or retailer. So, the supporting sentence claims that consumers find product by searching among auxiliary vendors. Further, it says that shopping search engine displays same product’s availability and price at different retailers which is obviously used for comparison purposes. Hence, online shopping allows customers to compare from auxiliary merchants.

  1. Online shop tempts the physical likeness of buying products at a retail centre.

Answer: TRUE
Supporting Sentence: An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a regular "bricks-and-mortar" retailer or shopping centre; the procedure is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping.
Keyword: Online shop, buying products, retailer
Keyword Location: Paragraph 2, 1st & 2nd line
Explanation: The word evokes and tempts can be used in the same context here. The usage of regular “brick-and-mortar” retailer and shopping centre refers to a retail centre because physical stores are made of brick and mortar. The expression physical likeness can also be written as physical analogy because the word analogy means similarity or likeness. Now, the supporting sentence claims that a online shop tempts the experience of physical likeness of buying products at a retail centre. Hence, the claim made within the question i.e., online shopping is just like shopping at a physical store is true.

  1. Customers are not exposed to a lot of information about products while purchasing them online.

Answer: FALSE
Supporting Sentence: A typical online store enables the customer to peruse the firm's range of products and services, view photos or images of the products, along with information about the product specifications, features, and prices.
Keyword: online, product, information
Keyword Location: Paragraph 2, 4th, 5th & 6th line
Explanation: The claim made within the question is that customers are not exposed to a lot of information about products while making a purchase. On the basis of supporting sentence taken from the passage this statement is false. The supporting sentence says that an online store enables the customer to peruse information about product specification, features and prices. It also enables customer to peruse firm’s range of products, view photos etc. This qualifies as exposure to a lot of information because it contains several elements as is generally not found in offline shops. So, Customers are indeed exposed to a lot of information about products while purchasing them online.

  1. Ali Baba only retails digital books.

Answer: NOT GIVEN
Explanation: No justified statement was found in the passage to support the above statement. Hence the above statement can be regarded as an invalid one.

  1. An investigation reported that the online shoppers were inspired by time saving and leisure reasons.

Answer: FALSE
Supporting Sentence: They focused on shopping motivations and found that the variety of products available and the perceived convenience of the buying online experience were significant motivating factors. This was
different for offline shoppers, who were more motivated by time saving and recreational motives.
Keyword: motivating, time saving
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, 6th & 7th lines
Explanation: The supporting sentence says that they focused on motivations and found which means an investigation was being carried out in this regard. The result of the findings was that the motivating factors for online buyers was product’s availability and perceived convenience. The question on the other hand claims that online shoppers were inspired/motivated by time saving and leisure reasons. Clearly the results of the investigation and the claim made within the question don’t match. Further evidence of this fact is the same investigation revealed that offline shoppers were more motivated by time saving reasons and recreational reasons. The motivations of offline shoppers can’t be pasted on online shoppers.

  1. Videotex Technology system came after the origination of Internet.

Answer: FALSE
Supporting Sentence: He believed that videotex, the modified domestic TV technology with a simple menu-driven human-computer interface, was a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium, the first from the time when the invention of the telephone happened.
Keyword: Videotex
Keyword Location: Paragraph 5, 3rd line
Explanation: The supporting sentence is talking about Videotex, calling it a modified TV technology. As regards its origin the supporting sentence says that it was a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium, the first from the time when the invention of the telephone happened. This means between telephone and this technology nothing new had happened in the field of participative communication medium. It points towards the absence of the Internet because the internet with emails and social media is the ultimate goal of participative communication. So, if the Internet was absent until the time of Videotex that means the Internet came later than Videotex Technology.

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