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Man: Good morning. In today's class we'll be comparing two supermarket chains whose futures are looking very different at the moment. First of all, the Williams chain.
男子：同学们早上好。今天，我们来对比两个当前看来前景大有不同的超市连锁品牌。首先是威廉姆斯连锁超市。
Sharon Tucker joined Williams two years ago as Sales Director, taking over as Chief Executive three months later. The company was struggling. Sales growth was fading away, and profits were falling. Its strategy of focusing on redesigning stores was doing nothing to boost sales. In short, Williams had lost its way.
莎伦·塔克尔两年前加入威廉姆斯担任销售总监，三个月后接任CEO。当时超市已经举步维艰。业绩下滑，利润也在缩水。其集中精力重新设计分店的策略也丝毫没能起到提高销售额的作用。简而言之，威廉姆斯已经开始走下坡路了。
After just one year under Tucker's leadership, it's regained its confidence, and with good reason. Sales have been rising for fifteen months, starting almost as soon as she walked in the door. They're up by five per cent in the last six months, excluding new space, with profits over the same period rising by ten per cent. And the company claims to have attracted a million new customers.
然而，塔克尔接手一年，超市就重振旗鼓了，而且有充分的理由。销售额一连增长了15个月，而且几乎是从她刚加入时就开始增长了。过去的六个月里，超市的销售额增长了5%，还不包括新店的业绩，利润同期增长10%。超市还表示，除了这些利润，它们还吸引了100万的新客户。
Tucker came from the American chain Hurst's, and her experience there persuaded her that everyday low pricing, the strategy pursued by that giant and by most of the British supermarket groups, wouldn't work for a small player like Williams. Its larger rivals could too easily undercut it.
塔克尔出身美国连锁超市品牌赫斯特，经验告诉她，每日低价的策略，也即郝斯特及大多数英国的连锁超市集团都采纳的策略，在威廉姆斯这种小超市品牌这里根本行不通。其他大品牌要想跟它进行低价竞争简直易如反掌。
Instead, she decided to use a high-low strategy, which is generally known as loss-leading. The technique's familiar: cut the price of twenty or so selected items each week. The radical part came in the implementation.
于是，塔克尔决定采用高/低价格策略，更通俗的说法是"亏本销售定价策略"。这一手法大家已经很熟悉了：每周挑选20种左右的商品进行促销。好戏还在后头。
