Testi Inglese 3 orale (Current Business English)

THE MOTOR TRADE – DEATH OF A CAR SALESMAN

motor trade = businesses involved in the buying and selling of motor vehicles

death of a car salesman = metaphor, it means the reduction or elimination of car dealers in the motor industry

Technology is reducing/diminishing the role of middlemen, especially the role of car dealers: customers are using the internet for choosing a new car, and more of them are getting loans and insurance online rather than buying them from the dealer who sells them their car.

A century ago, manufacturers tried selling their vehicles at the factory gate, in shops they owned themselves, by mail order and through travelling salesmen. But eventually they settled on a system of franchising, in which independent dealers mostly sell just one maker's models. Now, almost all motor vehicles sold worldwide cross dealers' forecourts.

Surveys show that car buyers find the experience of visiting a dealer boring, confrontational, and bureaucratic. This is

because car buyers turn up having already decided which model and which options they want/need and, having checked price-comparison websites, how much they will pay. Almost all cars these days have decent performance and handling, so test drives are less important than ever. Instead styling and branding figure/are more prominently in buyers' minds. What consumers want is someone to talk them though all the features that cars come with these days (entertainment systems, navigation services, automated parking, ...). Since 2013 BMW has been installing "product geniuses" in some larger showrooms, to talk potential buyers through its cars' features without pressing them to close a sale. Also Daimler Benz and Kia have begun similar initiatives. The motor industry has spent more than a century training buyers to expect haggling (= contrattazione), followed by discounts. Customers say having to argue about the price is one of the things that puts them off dealers, so somefirms are offering them ways to avoid it. Ex: Costco sold new and used cars in America last year, using its buying power to get good deals, doing the haggling on behalf of motorists. Lexus is experimenting with haggle-free pricing in its dealerships.

haggle-free pricing

No-haggle car buying means you get the price for the vehicle you want to buy upfront.

Some dealers are experimenting with selling cars online, or opening temporary "pop-up" showrooms in shopping centres. Others are offering to bring cars to a potential buyer's home/workplace for a test drive. Tesla is trying to cut out the dealers altogether and selling directly to motorists/customers, as Ford and General Motors did in the past, but they were deterred by resistant dealers and restrictive laws in some American states. The legislation, enacted in the 1950s to protect dealers, is now being used to put the brakes on Tesla. But the firm is still battling to open stores in states where direct

sales are banned or restricted. And it is winning most of its fights.

Other carmakers (Hyundai, Daimler Benz, BMW and Volvo) have set up experiments in Europe to sell cars through websites, where customers can configure their new cars and pay a deposit but the final transaction is handled offline by a dealer. Such selling methods strengthen customers' relationships with carmakers, so they may steadily weaken the case for having dealers. But the role of dealers is becoming weaker and weaker. Cars will soon come with built-in mobile-internet connections that will stream data directly to the manufacturer (as it happens today), so middlemen will be cut out (which will mean higher profits for them/lower prices for buyers).

Another reason to eliminate dealers is that they are used as dumping-grounds when manufacturers overproduce (this is called "channel-stuffing"). If cars were sold directly by the maker, and production were constantly tailored to match sales, the industry's

fortunes could be transformed. Dealers are desperate to remain the source of new cars even though they often make little or no money flogging (= vendendo, piazzando) them. However, selling new cars is the engine that drives the rest of their business - finance, insurance, warranties (= garanzie) and other aftermarket products. Trade-ins are a source of income for dealers. Trade-in a used article accepted by a retailer in part payment for another.

Warranty it is a written promise by a company that, if you find a fault in something they have sold you within a certain time, they will repair it or replace it free of charge

Aftermarket products aftermarket refers to the buying and selling of parts or equipment for a product after the initial product was manufactured and sold

But today online firms are replicating these services, or they can be found easily online. It must be said that some motorists might prefer to buy from dealers face-to-face than over the internet.creates competition among dealers and keep the retail margin low, and if a model must be recalled due to a problem, dealers can contact the owner promptly, since they are usually paid to correct the fault. In America car dealers are a forceful lobby even if their grip on the industry is loosening. Lobby: a group of people who try to persuade the government or an official group to do something. A group of people who represent a particular industry or interest in dealing with politicians, officials, and so on. The all-purpose dealership model now is weaker, and certainly if customers are happy to buy directly from carmakers, lawmakers should not stand in their way. Intermediario: middleman Cortile, piazzale: forecourt Conflittuale, aggressivo: confrontational Burocratico: bureaucratic Price-comparison: premium price Contrattare/contrattazione: to haggle/haggling Concessionaria: dealership Concessionario auto: car dealer Venditore ambulante: travelling salesman Agente immobiliare: estate agent Assicurazione: insurance

polizza insurance

ostacoli giuridici legal hurdle

odore di smell of tyres

stabilimenti di factory gate

gomma/pneumatico produzione

prezzo di listino list price

margine al dettaglio retail margin

essere valutati to be assessed

essere orientati to be geared

essere dissuasi/scoraggiati to be deterred

essere in calo to be waning

prefabbricati ready-made

discarica dumping-ground

ricercato/ambito modello sought-after model

effetto sorprendente striking effect

funzionalità fantastiche whizzy features

permuta, ripresa trade-in

dell'usato used

introdursi, imporsi to muscle

vendere to flog

riflettere, rimuginare to mull

comprendere to encompass

sgretolare to chip away

presentare, proporre to put forward

legislatori lawmakers

incorporato, integrato built-in

channel-stuffing it is a deceptive business practice used by a company to inflate its sales and earnings figures by deliberately sending retailers along its distribution channel more products than they are able to sell to the public. It refers

To the practice of a company shipping more goods to distributors and retailers along the distribution channel than end-users are likely to buy in a reasonable time period.

6. CHINA'S LABOUR MARKET - SHOCKS AND ABSORBERS 6

The article begins/opens with the story of a worker, who climbed a crane (= gru), threatening to jump in order to get the authorities' attention to the fact that his company had stopped paying its employees. We can say that this was an isolated case, as the other workers took safer measures to demand their missing wages: they marched out and blockaded a nearby highway.

The global shipping industry is depressed, plagued by oversupply at a time when slowing trade means demand for new ships is shrinking. Especially Chinese firms are in trouble: in fact, all Chinese companies who overexpanded themselves some years ago are now struggling to get by. Withholding wages is a common tactic for Chinese companies in trouble, even though the government is trying to

Discourage such responses. Many workers at other hard-hit companies, especially in heavy industry, are facing similar frustrations. The Communist Party, who has always disregarded investors and instead took serious interest in workers, is worried that this situation could ruin the solid reputation the party gained from improving middle and lower classes' way of life. Despite the worrying situation, the numbers show that the reality is not so bad: the unemployment rate rose by 0.1% and in services the employment even rose from 50% to 51%.

However, the employment data (= dati sull'occupazione) are flattered by two Chinese shock-absorbers: (1) First, the hukou system of household registration means that some 270m migrant workers who have gone to cities for jobs do not enjoy a permanent right to live in them, let alone collect unemployment insurance there. When they lose their jobs, they are expected to return to their original homes - often in the countryside - and do not count as unemployed.

The countryside and its agricultural jobs act as a "safety valve" that can absorb unemployment. (2) The second absorbers are SOEs, "State-Owned Enterprises": while it's true that private firms tend to run better/to be more profitable, SOEs (being politically backed) have easier access to finance and dominate restricted sectors (energy, transports). These privileges come with political duties: one of the most important is to help maintain social stability by not firing employees (synonym: refraining from laying off workers) or contributing to the country (ex. SOEs are leaving 5% of their vacancies for demobilised soldiers). Analysts at the IMF (International Monetary Fund) noted this trend of "labour hoarding" which suppresses unemployment at the cost of a way lower productivity. But even SOEs do not have infinite resources, and loss-making companies are starting to lay employees down. China's economy should, in theory, be able to accommodate most.

of the unemployed workforce, given the less intense job competition and the shifting towards the services sector, which will generate new jobs at a higher pace even if the economy slows down.

In fact, employment centers around the country still report a shortage of workers in 2015. The problem for shipbuilders and coalminers is that many of the service jobs are for younger, more educated people – and you can't reinvent yourself in an accounting firm if you're a coalminer. But for many industry employees, the question about their next job is not even the hardest one to solve. With bosses withholding their salaries, the real question for them is how to survive each day.

incombere loom over tasso di disoccupazione jobless rate cantiere navale Shipyard forza lavoro workforce borsa valori stock market

7. ECO-FRIENDLY DETERGENTS – GREEN WASH

The company Method is a maker of environmentally friendly cleaning products, whose ambitions are sky-high (= alle stelle): they want to be

“the most sustainable and the most socially beneficial c