Today, the high sales of popular consumer goods reflect the power of advertising and not the real needs of the society in which they are sold. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
These days, with a wide range of consumer productsa hoard of consumer products available onin the market, some people have difficulty deciding which products they really need and what they merely wantwhat they just want to have. Fierce competitionCut-throat competition among brands seeking customersbrands to win consumers has become widespread, and advertisements play a key role in today’s marketing. However, only advertisement is not what forces people to buy things, their real needs are still a powerful factor.
Brands apply various marketing techniques to sell their products to consumers, and advertisingadvertisement is one of them. Tempting adverts on billboards, TV, radio or the web constantly encourage consumers to buy productsare constantly pushing us to buy things that advertisers promote as the bestthat they claim are the best. This has an impact on consumers' purchasing decisions, but a largegreat proportion of customers are still driven by their needs rather than the adverts they see. EconomicRampant recessions and soaring living costs have also forced people to cut even necessary items from their shopping listscut necessary items from their shopping list, let alone have the luxury of buying whatever they wish.
Moreover, a sharp growth in salesan intensive growth of sales of popular consumer items has resulted from people's modern lifestyles, in whichpeople's modern lifestyle where they need far more things than their ancestors didfar more things than their ancestors. The role of advertisement, in this case, is confined to helping people choose the products and not persuading them to buy unnecessary goods. For instance, electronic gadgets and household appliances that people use today were not widespread in the past. They came into our liveslife as a natural consequence of modern lifestylesnatural requirement from our modern lifestyle and were not just pushed by persuasiveluring advertisements from different brands.
In conclusion, advertisements are a powerful tool for brands and they can affect many purchasers' decisions, but they can not shape what people, as a whole, buy. Modern lifestyle and our real needs are more powerful in this regard.
(Writen by Hesam Hajheidari )
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response's strongest feature is a clear, qualified disagreement developed through two relevant lines of reasoning: financial necessity and the demands of modern lifestyles. The argument is logically organised and generally expressed with effective range, though a few claims are broad and some collocations and sentence joins are imprecise. The highest priority is to substantiate how real needs outweigh advertising with a more specific example and tighter causal explanation.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response presents a clear position, addresses advertising's influence, and develops relevant reasons why genuine needs remain more decisive.
Strengthen the position with a concrete example showing consumers rejecting heavily advertised nonessential goods because of financial priorities.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information is logically sequenced across focused paragraphs, and cohesive devices generally guide the reader without obscuring progression.
Make the link between rising living costs and restrained purchasing more explicit so the first body paragraph reaches a sharper conclusion.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficiently varied and flexible for advertising, consumption, and economic pressures, with only occasional unnatural combinations.
Refine collocations such as intensive growth and luring advertisements to rapid growth and persuasive advertisements.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A good range of complex structures is used with generally strong control, although a few comma splices and agreement or form errors remain.
Separate independent clauses correctly and proofread singular and plural references to advertising and consumer goods.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Today, the high sales of popular consumer goods reflect the power of advertising and not the real needs of the society in which they are sold. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.