Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Stores Use Charity to Attract Shoppers, 12/20/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec04/shopping_12-20.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Did you go shopping for presents this holiday season?

2. Were the stores crowded or empty?

3. If you were offered a choice of a certificate that said you paid for an eye operation for a child in Asia or Africa or a new I-Pod, which would you choose?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What are some examples of charity marketing?

Some stores are trying new marketing campaigns to entice shoppers. The Gap is offering $20 teddy bears, the proceeds of which will go toward giving 70,000 coats to poor boys and girls. Upscale New York City home furnishing store ABC Carpet & Home is selling real water buffaloes -- $135 buys one, delivered to a small village in Cambodia.

Wal-Mart announced this week that it would match up to $1 million in donations given to Salvation Army red kettles outside its stores.

2. What is the significance of the Live Strong bracelets?

At Nike and other stores, you can buy $1 Lance Armstrong Live Strong bracelets to finance cancer research. So far, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has sold $28 million of the $1 bracelets.

To many, buying a $1 bracelet is both for charity and to be cool.

"My uncle died of cancer, and I support it because of that," said Emma Katherine Willis, 11, from Providence, R.I. "But everyone in my school has one, too, and I wanted one."

3. What does Paco Underhill say about merchants using charities to lure in shoppers?

But Paco Underhill, a retailing consultant and the author of "Why We Buy," said stores already needed a new strategy. As Americans become more comfortable buying presents online, stores are facing stiff competition from the Internet. Online sales were up 21 percent over the comparable period last year, according to the company VeriSign, which processes over a third of online credit card sales.

"All the merchants woke up in the 21st century to realize the old tools -- the advertising or sales promotions, the tools they taught in business school -- don't work anymore," Underhill told the Times.

"The stores are hoping to wrap themselves in a mantle that distinguishes themselves. Just as Whole Foods has wrapped itself in the mantle of organic, chemical-free food, this season's retailers are trying to identify themselves with charity," he said.

4. What does the head of ABC Carpet say about charitable gifts?

"The political climate seems ready; people are looking for leadership and direction post-9/11. I really do believe there is a strong progressive movement building and that I am helping to bring it to the mainstream. Merchants can set a tone," said Paulette Cole, chief executive at ABC Carpet.

Buying a charitable gift at a store "can take away the emptiness of these consumer dollars just sailing off into the atmosphere," Cole said.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you think buying a charitable gift at a store is the same as giving money directly to a charity? Why or why not?

2. Do you think selling charitable gifts is a good marketing strategy? Are you more likely to go to a store that also offers the opportunity to spend money on gifts that do good?

3. If you owned a clothing or electronics store, would you offer charitable gifts? What kind?

4. How would you feel if you got a certificate for an eye operation for a child in Asia or Africa instead of a new bike or an X-Box?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.