IELTS Writing Task 2 sample answer (band score 8-9)
IELTS Essay # 1235 - Businesses emphasise that products are new in some way
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IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Essay:
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
In their advertising, businesses nowadays usually emphasise that their products are new in some way.
Why is this?
Do you think it is a positive or a negative development?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Model Answer 1: [View: It is a negative development.]
Businesses often have to endure cut-throat competition in order to attract customers and increase sales and profit. As a means to attract more customers, they have a tool called "advertisement" which emphasises how their products stand out from the crowd and how uniquely novel they are. Advertising new and unique features of a product is a marketing and branding strategy to boost sales, and in my opinion, it is mostly a negative development.
Every brand claims that they have the best product in the market, and their goods have fascinating new features. They do so to create a positive impression on the consumers to increase their sales and profitability while also staying ahead of their competitors. Take the advertisements that we watch on TV for consumer products like shampoo, soaps or body lotion - all of which proclaim that their products have the best ingredients and something new that their counterparts do not have. Even they beat their old versions by adding a new vitamin or flavour (which is often ridiculed by scientists) and claiming that this is the best-ever product! Clearly, this is a marketing strategy to boost sales and profitability while also creating a craving among consumers for their products.
This trend may have some advantages but it is mostly a negative trend because the new features that the businesses advertise are nothing novel in the true sense. They are just another version of the same product with a change in look, flavour or ingredients. Most often consumer products add more creativity to their advertisements than the real products, thus making a false sense that people need their new products.
In conclusion, novelty and innovation in products come through research and development, not through marketing and advertising tricks - which is often the case in the adverts we are exposed to. It is expected that advertisements by brands would reflect the true features of goods rather than claiming something new and innovative every now and then.
Model Answer 2: [View: It is a positive development.]
Brands often promote their products as innovative and novel. They primarily do so to attract more customers and increase their sales. This has some drawbacks as well as some merits. But in my opinion, any effort, on the part of businesses, to describe their products or services in a new light should be considered a positive thing because, without such practices, we would not be able to know about many of the necessary products and services that we use today.
The obvious reason for this trend is that all businesses want to boost their sales and revenues. But, unfortunately, increasing sales and revenues is not always as easy as it may sound, especially, when they are operating in a very fiercely competitive market. And that is exactly why they need to employ innovative advertising ideas and business strategies to show their prospective customers that their products indeed are “something new” and offer better values for the prices they pay.
Advertising products as new or innovative is a positive development and indeed needed because it helps businesses and companies reach and attract a larger customer base from different lifestyles, cultural backgrounds, professions, ages, races and religions. In other words, we all are different, with different tastes and preferences, and therefore it is only natural that businesses would want to target each group of these customers with different and unique messages in order to showcase and identify their products as something “new”. Moreover, such strategies employed by businesses bring positive results to many consumers because, the majority of the customers today, if not all, expect more out of their life.
In conclusion, to keep customers on board and enhance sales businesses often advertise their products and services as innovative and new. It helps both customers to satisfy their more-than-life expectations as consumers while also bringing in more revenue to businesses.
Idea Generation for this IELTS Essay:
Essay Question:
In their advertising, businesses nowadays usually emphasise that their products are new in some way.
Why is this?
Do you think it is a positive or a negative development?
Essay Type:
Double -Question Essay (Cause + Positive/ Negative Development).
Main Question of This Essay:
Why do businesses focus on the "newness" of their products in advertisements?
Is this a positive or negative trend?
Reasons why businesses highlight the newness of their products:
1. Attracting consumer attention:
In a highly competitive market, companies need to capture potential buyers’ interest quickly. Emphasizing the uniqueness or innovation of a product makes it stand out from competitors. For example, smartphone brands frequently highlight new features such as improved cameras or faster processors to attract tech-savvy consumers.
2. Creating a sense of exclusivity and urgency:
Marketing a product as "new" makes it appear trendy and desirable, encouraging consumers to buy it before it becomes outdated. Limited-time promotions on newly launched products often create urgency. For example, fashion brands release seasonal collections to entice shoppers to purchase before styles change.
3. Responding to consumer demand for innovation:
Modern consumers expect continuous improvements in products, whether in technology, sustainability, or convenience. Businesses emphasize new features to meet these expectations. For instance, electric vehicle companies focus on battery advancements to attract environmentally conscious buyers.
4. Reinforcing brand image and credibility:
Positioning a product as innovative strengthens a company’s reputation as a leader in its industry. Consumers associate brands that frequently introduce new features with progress and reliability. For example, tech companies like Apple and Samsung market their products as cutting-edge to maintain industry dominance.
5. Encouraging repeat purchases:
By frequently introducing upgraded versions of products, businesses encourage customers to replace older models with newer ones. This strategy boosts long-term sales. For example, car manufacturers release new models annually with small design modifications to entice previous buyers to upgrade.
6. Enhancing perceived value and justification for higher prices:
When a product is marketed as new and improved, consumers are more willing to pay a premium. The perception of innovation often convinces buyers that they are getting better quality or exclusive benefits. For example, luxury car brands introduce new models with minor upgrades and justify price increases by branding them as superior versions.
7. To stay ahead in the competition:
Companies must continuously innovate and market their products as new to differentiate themselves from rivals. Businesses that fail to showcase fresh features risk losing customers to competitors that do. For instance, streaming platforms frequently update their services with new content and features to attract and retain users.
Why this trend has negative impacts:
1. Encourages overconsumption and waste:
Consumers feel pressured to buy new products even when their existing ones are still functional, leading to unnecessary waste. This contributes to environmental issues such as electronic waste and resource depletion. For example, the fast fashion industry produces excessive textile waste due to frequent product updates.
2. Misleading advertising tactics:
Some companies exaggerate product improvements, making minor changes appear revolutionary. This can lead to consumer dissatisfaction when the "new" product does not offer significant benefits. For example, some beauty brands repackage old formulas as new, misleading buyers into thinking they are purchasing an upgraded version.
3. Financial burden on consumers:
Frequent product releases create pressure to spend on the latest versions, even when older models work well. This leads to unnecessary financial strain, especially for those who feel the need to keep up with trends. For instance, many people upgrade smartphones yearly despite only minor improvements.
4. Loss of long-term product reliability:
Companies focus on short-term sales rather than durable products, reducing overall quality and longevity. This results in consumers needing to replace products more often. For example, household appliances may be designed with planned obsolescence, forcing customers to buy replacements sooner.
5. Shifts focus from real value to novelty:
Instead of prioritizing genuinely useful improvements, companies may introduce superficial changes to market their products as "new." This prioritization of style over substance leads to unnecessary spending. For example, minor design alterations in cars or smartphones may be marketed as major innovations, while core functionality remains unchanged.
Why this trend has positive impacts:
1. Encourages technological advancements and innovation:
The constant push for new features drives research and development, leading to better products. For example, competition in the smartphone industry has resulted in improved battery life, faster processors, and enhanced camera technology, benefiting consumers.
2. Offers consumers more choices and better experiences:
Businesses striving to introduce new features provide customers with more variety and improved functionality. For instance, advancements in smart home devices allow users to control appliances more efficiently, improving convenience and daily life.
Model Answer 3: [View: It is a negative development.]
Nowadays, most brands place significant emphasis on promoting their products as novel and innovative in their advertising campaigns. This trend is becoming increasingly prevalent, and one that many, including me, believe is a negative development.
Businesses choose to promote their products this way for many different reasons. First and foremost, new products are often seen as more exciting and appealing to consumers than older products. And when consumers find something appealing, they spend more money to purchase them. Additionally, promoting a product as new and innovative can help a product stand out in the marketplace, and ensure more profit for the business organisation. Perhaps, this is why we see so many variations of cosmetics in a single store, and many of them have been introduced very recently.
It is ultimately a negative trend. First, it can mislead consumers by giving false or fabricated information about a product. This is both unethical and deceitful. Second, The trend can lead to a cycle of constant consumption by many consumers, and after a while, dissuade them from buying products that they believe would be replaced by new products sooner or later. For instance, the demand for newly released Apple products is no longer so high among consumers as they know the brand is going to bring another improved version of the same products in a year or so.
Furthermore, the constant emphasis on newness and advertisement campaigns to broadcast them to consumers can lead to a lack of innovation. When businesses are more focused on promoting their products as unique, rather than actually making them pristine, they may be less likely to invest in research and development to create truly innovative products. An example of this can be seen in the technology industry, where new smartphones are constantly being released with only small improvements over previous models, which can lead to consumer dissatisfaction.
In conclusion, most enterprises publicise their products as new and innovative, and it is a negative development since it can dupe customers and lead to customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, businesses must focus on creating truly new and innovative products, instead of just promoting them as such.
In today’s fast-progressing era, the consumer mentality is that people usually get bored seeing and using the same product over and over again, and they always expect new innovations in already existing products. If a brand fails to introduce something new over a long period of time, customers usually tend to move to newer products. For instance, Colgate, a toothpaste brand, advertises a new flavour every now and then understanding the interest of the locality. It helps not only retain existing buyers but also attract newer customers.
“Survival of the smartest,” is very much applicable in this scenario, as any company in order to survive, should be well equipped to face the tough completion of the world. Because so many enterprises strive to succeed in what they do, introducing new features in products is not an option but a necessity. For instance, the other day, I saw a street coconut vendor who was cutting the coconut in a totally different style than others in my locality, who usually just cut open the top portion of the coconut and insert a straw and serve it, however, this person used a very different technique that is he cut open the coconut so carefully that he removed all the hard part in the outer surface and served just the white tender part with the water in it. This not only attracted a lot of new customers to him but also helped him earn a lot more money than others with just a little bit of innovation.
Overall, I would say that it is very much a survival criterion to advertise new innovations in existing products from time to time in order to thrive in the market.
In today’s time, with the usage of social media sites, networking and the approach to new ideas are much more accessible and an easy mode of communication for people across the globe, irrespective of where they reside or stay. Hence, they are aware of many things going around in their periphery.
Nowadays, they look forward to comparing and reviewing the products they use or buy, regardless of completely trusting the ingredients mentioned on the packaging list. They have many sources available to review and be mindful of the products before consumption. For instance, sources like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and many more grant them the necessary information, which undoubtedly helps them to navigate through the whole research procedure. That, at times, seems to be hectic and overwhelming.
Furthermore, entrepreneurs advertise products in many ways. One such method is by hiring influencers and well-recognized people to create a positive image in people’s minds. Appearances are deceptive, yet a well-sophisticated brand, logo, and design attract the population and build up an impressive status. Adding to this, there could several ways to reach out to the consumers, although I believe that one must be aware of their politics and advertising, which claims to serve the real products and fool the innocent ones.
In their advertising, businesses nowadays usually emphasise that their products are new in some way.
Why is this? Do you think it is a positive or negative development?
Essay:
In this cutting-edge technology-driven era, advertising plays a key role in promoting the products and services of a business. Nowadays, many businesses exaggerate by saying their products and services are unlike all other products and have unique features and quality. In this essay, I will discuss the reasons for this. Personally, I believe that it is overall a bad development.
People often rely on advertisements to decide what to buy and when as those advertisements are all around them and are created to have a psychological impact on consumers. If a product is shown to have excellent and unique features with no demerits, then it is expected that consumers will buy them. This is why businesses do it all the time. Moreover, it might be because of the cut-throat competition companies face in the market. For example, a simple product, like a bar of bath soap, has at least 100 producers in our country. So a company has to compete with 99 other brands to sell their products which forces them to come up with innovative adverts to allure people to buy their products due to their superior and unique features.
This is overall a bad trend because when every brand claims to have the best product, most of them are lying. Advertisements of products, particularly beauty products, claim to have active ingredients to improve our skin colour and make us beautiful. They often claim to have new ingredients to achieve more fairness and glow. This is not only unethical and wrong but also misleading. This happens in other industries where a claim of a unique feature of a product is often exaggerated and not backed by science and experiments.
To recapitulate, businesses often show their items as more worthy than they really are for many primarily to attract customers and stay ahead in the competition. Overall, it is a bad trend as the claims are often false.
Why is this? Do you think it is a positive or negative development?
All kinds of businesses these days have to endure high competition with their rivals in the same field. Which makes companies struggle more to stand out and get customers to choose them. So, they came up with the idea of advertising that the products they sell are new to attract people. This essay will discuss the reason why they do this, and why I think it is a negative development.
First of all, companies try their best to sell people their products in every possible way, and it is the main reason why they advertise the items they sell by claiming that they are novel. Thus, human beings are curious and love to experience innovations in products, and companies exploit their curiosity for their benefit. Furthermore, claiming that products offer new features for customers can be beneficial to increase their profit, and get people to buy them.
In my opinion, this way of advertising that businesses are developing nowadays has a bad influence on our society for two main reasons. Firstly, people tend to buy unnecessary products to satisfy their curiosity about trying new things. For example, when a supermarket provides a new food item and labels it as "new", customers will be automatically attracted to try it. Secondly, it keeps people feeling unsatisfied with their lives if they could not have them. For instance, when companies release a new smartphone, people start to feel the need to buy the latest version to show off or fit in the society.
In conclusion, in advertisements, companies claim that the items they produce are new to make them look more appealing to customers. I think this has negative impacts on people as it forces people to buy things they do not need and make them constantly feel unsatisfied.
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