The following appeared in a memo from the new vice president of Sartorian, a company that manufactures men's clothing.
"Five years ago, at a time when we had difficulties in obtaining reliable supplies of high quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. This coat should sell very well: since we have not offered an alpaca overcoat for five years and since our major competitor no longer makes an alpaca overcoat, there will be pent-up customer demand. Also, since the price of most types of clothing has increased in each of the past five years, customers should be willing to pay significantly higher prices for alpaca overcoats than they did five years ago, and our company profits will increase."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The vice president of Sartorian, a men's clothing manufacturing company, argues in his memo that they should resume their production of alpaca coats that were discontinued 5 years ago. This argument builds around a sanguine outlook of consumer demand for alpaca coats and their willingness to pay high prices for these coats. Nevertheless, more information regarding the current fashion trends and clothing alternatives, the cost of resuming production, and the economic power of their customers should be presented to assess the robustness of the argument.
The first piece of evidence we need to acquire is the current fashion trends. Since the prosperity of the clothing industry largely depends on the vacillating consumer taste, clothing manufacturing companies often go through unpredictable ups-and-downs. We need more reports about customers' thoughts on alpaca coats and fashion editor's articles to gauge the popularity of this line of clothing. It might be the talk of the town 5 years ago, but its popularity might diminish throughout the years and be considered obsolete nowadays. If this is the case, resuming its production might not be beneficial for Sartorian.
Secondly, we need data about the costs of resuming the production of alpaca coats. That profit is revenue minus costs is simple math. Even if customer demand for alpaca coats is high and the consumption generates large revenue, a disproportionate production cost might offset the sales increase. For example, resuming productions involves the establishment of new factories, the acquisition of new machinery, and the training of workers. Also, the price of high-quality wool fabric might be higher than it was 5 years ago. Unless comprehensive production cost data and revenue prospect reports are presented, we cannot justifiably claim that resuming alpaca coats production is bound to generate profits.
Finally, we need to know more about the general public's economic power and spending habits. We only know from the passage that prices of most types of clothing have increased, but this does not necessarily correlate with the customer's willingness to pay high prices for clothing. The price increase of clothing may be due to severe inflation and society's economy is actually at the brink of collapse. In this case, customers can't be able to pay high prices for alpaca coats. Also, general customers' spending habits might be different from 5 years ago. For example, they might be more frugal when spending money and buy more essential stuff that clothing. In this case, resuming production for high-priced coats might not be a great idea.
In conclusion, more evidence related to the aforementioned issues must be presented to substantiate the vice president's claim that Sartorian should resume their production of alpaca overcoats.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 441 350
No. of Characters: 2333 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.583 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.29 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.88 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 110 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.045 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.449 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.636 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.505 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.119 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 226, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'customers'' or 'customer's'?
Suggestion: customers'; customer's
...does not necessarily correlate with the customers willingness to pay high prices for clot...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 426, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...nk of collapse. In this case, customers cant be able to pay high prices for alpaca c...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, if, look, may, nevertheless, regarding, second, secondly, so, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2385.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 441.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.40816326531 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58257569496 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94045646335 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 208.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.471655328798 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 729.0 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.8673360122 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.409090909 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0454545455 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.68181818182 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.216728364216 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0712038015729 0.0743258471296 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0562302488542 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127280350479 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0258600788912 0.0628817314937 41% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.78 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.