听力原文：Narrator: Listen to part of a discussion in a business class. Professor: Industry analysts report that multinational food companies are trying to use the same types of strategies Q29 that automobile and electronics manufacturers have found to be successful in the global marketplace. The problem is that general rules for products that tend to be traditional for national or even regional tastes... these products are very difficult to identify and sales arent easy to project. But, the companies that tend to do best are those that are the most responsive to local tastes. And they spend development dollars on taste testing in the local markets before they formulate the final product. Can anyone Q30 recall any examples from the case studies in the text? Sandy? Student 1 McDonalds Big Mac has more mustard in the special sauce in Paris than it does in New York. Professor: Because? Student 1: Because taste tests verified that people in the United States liked sweeter condiments than people did in France. In fact, I think the... the sugar content for export foods in general usually has to be modified when American products are taste tested overseas. Professor: Right you are. Probably the company thats adapted most to local tastes is Nestle. Can you believe that they produce more than 200 slightly different blends of Nescafe for export to different countries? Amazing but true. But sometimes taste is less a problem of ingredients and more a matter of the way a food product looks or feels. One case study that comes to mind is the one about the soft cookies that just dont sell as well in England as crisp cookies. So, you can see that taste extends way beyond just flavor. Its really a combination of flavor preferences and local expectations. Look, heres another example of accommodation that had more to do with the expectation for a process than the flavor of the product. In this case study, it was cake. Remember when Betty Crocker cake mixes were introduced in England, they werent accepted because the English homemaker felt more comfortable with convenience foods that required more than water to prepare them. Go figure. But that was the problem uncovered by extensive market research. So when the mix was reformulated without an egg, and the preparation included adding an egg with the water before mixing it, well, Betty Crocker cake mixes became very popular in England. Any other examples come to mind? They dont have to be from the case studies inthe book. Q31 Student 2: How about serving sizes? Professor: Go on. Student 2: Well soft drinks for one. Just compare the serving sizes in the United States and many foreign markets where soft drinks are sold. The cans in foreign markets are much smaller because consumers expect it. But, uh, in the United States, well, super sizing is probably a consideration when a foreign company is trying to crack the American market. Professor: Thats a great example. So the taste can be acceptable, but the packaging has to compare favorably Q32 with the competing brands and the publics expectations. Student 3: Yeah, but that makes products more expensive, doesnt it? I mean because you cant standardize the product or the packaging so that would make it more... more costly to produce, wouldnt it? Professor: Right you are, Chris. In fact, youve really gone to the heart of the issue. A compromise has to occur between the requirement that products be adapted to please the taste and the expectations of local consumers and the pressure to standardize products for maximum cost effectiveness. Now, lets complicate that even further. Even the experts dont agree on the importance of how far to go in adapting products for local markets. A few years ago, Ted Levitt—hes the editor of the Harvard Business Review—Levitt pred cted what he called a 'pluralization of consumption.' What he means is that at least Q33 in some areas, tastes are likely to converge, which makes sense when you think about the increased opportunities for travel and sampling of foods, as well as the continued global marketing efforts by multinational corporations. So logically, its smarter to simply identify the areas in which tastes are most likely to be the same, and concentrate efforts on those food products. But theres also the issue of global marketing. How about the potential to create taste? I mean, selling the image that surrounds using a product. If consumers want to associate themselves with that image, wont they develop a taste for the product that does that for them? For example, theres some Q34 evidence that the popularity of products seen in movies and television spills into the foreign maretplace.This subtle brand association with the movie or the celebrities in it translates into high dollar deals for cerain brands to be Visibly displayed in widely distributed films. Student 3: Oh, right. I was reading about that. It was in a couple of the case studies. The bottle, a can, or... or a package appears as part of the characters persona, and if its a character that audiences choose to identify with, then the taste for the product may follow, or at least thats what the marketing experts are betting on. Professor: And that includes foreign audiences. Anyone drink Starbucks coffee? Well, Starbucks began as a regional coffee in Seattle, Washington, and made the global leap in 2000, opening shops in China, a huge market surely, but also a traditionally tea-drinking society. So whats the attraction? Starbucks is marketing to the cosmopolitan consumer, the young trendy set looking for a modern image as well as a different taste. Still, there have been some real surprises in the multinational dinner party. No one has really figured out why the Italians, Germans, and British love Krafts Philadelphia cream cheese, and the Greeks simply dont buy it. And why did Perrier, a mineral water from France... why did Perrier take America by storm while other imported mineral waters... didnt? In short, success in the food export industry is probably a combination of the real taste... the flavor of the product, with some adaptation for the local markets, the satisfaction of certain expectations for the preparation and packaging, and the taste for the product created by images in the global marketing plan. Add to this mix the potential for a short shelf life or even perishable products and, well, you have a very challenging problem for the multinational food industry. What is the discussion mainly about?