The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of video rental stores.
“In order to reverse the recent decline in our profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore’s ten video rental stores. Since we are famous for our special bargains, raising our rental prices is not a viable way to improve profits. Last month our store in downtown Marston significantly decreased its operating expenses by closing at 6:00 P.M. rather than 9:00 P.M. and by reducing its stock by eliminating all movies released more than five years ago. Therefore, in order to increase profits without jeopardizing our reputation for offering great movies at low prices, we recommend implementing similar changes in our other nine Movies Galore stores.”
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether implementing the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result and explain how the answers to those questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The claims made by the owner of the Movie Galore is based on several ungrounded assumptions. There are several fallacies to the argument and the reasoning is not sound. The owner's claim about increasing profit is made on the basis of incomplete research and following questions need to be answered before the validity of the argument is ensured.
Firstly, the owner claims that operating costs be reduce to increase profits but there not enough data is provided to support this claim. What is the operating cost in comparison to other expenses and the profit itself? If the operating cost is negligible in comparison to other costs, the increase in profit may be insignificant.
The claim can also be assailed on the basis of video renting population and it's popularity. Has the population of people renting video decreased? Or has the popularity of video ranting changed? If so, how? Have people been busy and have no time to rent a video? These questions need to be answered so that precise reasons for the decrease in profit is figured out.
Also, the owner believes that the environment is same across all ten outlets of Movie Galore and similar procedure can be followed to ameliorate the situation. However, no evidence is put forward supporting this assertion. Is all ten stores all similar in location, size, popularity? If the answer is no, it seriously undermines the owner's claim.
The owner seems to have done no research about the competition. Are there any other movie renting stores that provides better service? Have the movie theaters reduced their prices such that people prefer going to theater than renting a video? These topics should be rigorously researched before reaching the conclusion that operating costs are the reasons for decreased profit.
Thus, several unanswered questions render the claim made by owner fallacious and dubious. To be absolutely certain to increase profit, the above topics should be studied in detail and questions raising reservations should be answered.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 328 350
No. of Characters: 1645 1500
No. of Different Words: 161 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.256 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.015 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.609 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 127 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 14.909 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.193 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.409 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.278 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.552 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, if, may, so, thus
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1686.0 2260.96107784 75% => OK
No of words: 328.0 441.139720559 74% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.14024390244 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.25567506705 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6815059985 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 164.0 204.123752495 80% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.5 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 540.9 705.55239521 77% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 14.0 22.8473053892 61% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 39.6828334765 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 76.6363636364 119.503703932 64% => OK
Words per sentence: 14.9090909091 23.324526521 64% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.40909090909 5.70786347227 42% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.126931168278 0.218282227539 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.041651996914 0.0743258471296 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0263993691422 0.0701772020484 38% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0714215185967 0.128457276422 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0184238083466 0.0628817314937 29% => 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: 10.2 14.3799401198 71% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.27 48.3550499002 118% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.8 12.197005988 72% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.94 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.52 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 87.0 98.500998004 88% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 7.6 11.1389221557 68% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.