September 2006 Listening test-English 3 Cl4
Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere
3rd year Listening Test CL4/VDU- September 2006
This test has 2 parts: Parts A and B.
Part A is a lead-in exercise. You will hear part A ONE time only. Then, you will have 1 minute to answer the TRUE-FALSE questions below.
True (T) False (F) ? According to the speaker, which of the following statements are true ? which are false ? which are not mentioned (NM)
______Starbuck’s coffee is now a global brand recognised around the world
______McDonald’s fast food restaurants have been successful world-wide thanks to a combination of low prices, quality control and strict hygiene rules
______In Italy, McDonald’s has not been successful
______Italians love Starbucks coffee
Part B. Notetaking and summarizing. You will hear the recording 3 times. Then, you will have 15 minutes to write a summary of the information given in part B. Your summary should be approximately 100 words in length. Write your summary in the space provided below.
______
Part A: T-T-F-NM
Summary: (131 words)
Starbucks coffee wants to enter the Italian market. This could seem difficult, given Italy’s 121,000 espresso bars, but the Starbuck’s philosophy was actually born in Italy, when the company’s owner – at the time a coffee salesman– was attending a trade fair in Milan. He was so impressed by Italian espresso bars that he was inspired to use his own company’s coffee beans to make the same sort of drinks in the US, where friendly community gathering places with high-quality coffee didn’t really exist. Starbuck’s success has depended on offering friendly meeting places, and as a general rule refusing to franchise –so as to keep control of product quality and training of staff. The company also buys the world’s best coffee beans, and then roasts grinds and brews them to strict specifications.
Tapescript Part A. Lead-in exercise.
In today’s world, globalization seems to be changing traditional ways of living and thinking — and has had a big impact on many aspects of life, including the way we dress, work and eat. Multinational businesses such as McDonald’s fast food restaurants or Starbuck’s coffee shops have developed global brands that are recognized in hundreds of countries, worldwide. The success of McDonald’s hamburgers and Starbuck’s coffee offers concrete, visible examples of how foreign habits and tastes are entering into people’s daily lives. And yet, none of this has happened by chance. Behind each company’s success story lies a concrete business strategy: in other words, there is a reason why the business idea or system has worked. For McDonald’s, key factors in success have been low prices together with careful quality control and strict hygiene rules, all of which make the experience of eating at McDonald’s reliable: wherever you are in the world, a BigMac will have the same taste and quality, and a competitive price.
Nevertheless, in Italy, the arrival of McDonald’s restaurants was greeted with skepticism, and the franchise chain’s success has been somewhat of a surprise. Most Italians didn’t really expect cheap hamburgers to be able to compete with traditional, but more expensive, Italian cuisine. And they were wrong.
Starbuck’s coffee is another interesting case. In the last 5 years, Starbucks has just kept getting bigger and bigger. In 2002, Starbuck’s opened its 4,000th store. After having spread through through the US, Asia, the Middle East and the UK, where it has almost 200 retail outlets, the specialty coffee retail giant opened its first store on the European continent in downtown Zurich in March 2002, and opened 650 stores in 6 countries across Europe over the following two years. By 2005, Starbucks had a total of 10,000 stores worldwide, with al goal of eventually reaching 20,000 ! What’s more, the company is now successfully selling many of its products on-line, at starbucks.com. Just a few years ago, Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, predicted that “Starbucks would someday become a truly global brand, as well recognized as Coke, or Walt Disney.” And it looks like he just may be right.
Understanding the story behind Starbuck’s success and its plans for the future could be of particular interest to Italians. After all, traditional, Italian espresso coffee is just as much a part of Italian culture as spaghetti or pizza !
Tapescript Part B. Notetaking and summarizing.
One of the company’s goals for the near future is to enter the Italian market. At first glance, that looks like an enormous challenge, given the fact that Italy already has a network of approximately 121,000 neighbourhood espresso bars. But, in a certain sense, the idea for Starbucks coffee shops was actually born in Italy. Most people don’t realize that Mr. Schultz was once just a low-paid salesman for a small American company which sold high-quality, fresh-roasted coffee beans. While attending a trade fair in Milan, a city with 1,500 espresso bars, Schultz decided to have an espresso- and that cup of coffee changed his life. After being pleasantly surprised by the friendly welcome --“Buon Giorno!”—that he received as soon as he walked into the café, Schultz was fascinated by what he saw: the barista looked like a juggler in a circus act as he handed a cup of espresso to one person, while creating several capuccini topped with white foam. As he chatted happily with customers, the barman seemed to be doing ten things at once: gracefully grinding the coffee beans, pulling shots of espresso and steaming milk. It was like being at the theatre, watching a work of art, and Schultz was immediately inspired. Why not use his own company’s coffee beans to make the same sort of drinks in the US ? Why not create community gathering places like Italy’s espresso bars ? And eventually, he did just that. Along with espresso, capuccino, caffelatte and biscotti, Starbucks offers a place for friends or colleagues to meet, especially in the US and in other parts of the world which don’t have the friendly pubs and cafés familiar to Europeans.
And that seems to have been one of the main reasons for the chain’s success. Another reason may be that Starbuck’s has refused to franchise – except in airports and other places that demand it – preferring to keep control of product quality and training of staff. Similarly, it has maintained close to vertical integration, sending its coffee buyers around the world in search of the best coffee beans, and then roasting, grinding and brewing them to strict specifications.