The following appeared in a memo to the board of directors of Bargain Brand Cereals.
"One year ago we introduced our first product, Bargain Brand breakfast cereal. Our very low prices quickly drew many customers away from the top-selling cereal companies. Although the companies producing the top brands have since tried to compete with us by lowering their prices and although several plan to introduce their own budget brands, not once have we needed to raise our prices to continue making a profit. Given our success in selling cereal, we recommend that Bargain Brand now expand its business and begin marketing other low-priced food products as quickly as possible."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In the memo to the board of directors of Bargain Brand Cereals, it is recommended hastily without any due diligence to expand the company's business and market the other low-priced food products as quickly as possible. However, there are few crucial questions that need to be answered in which the decision to sanction such a recommendation lies.
Firstly, What are the reasons the customers were quickly drawn to the low-priced Bargain Brand breakfast cereal instead of the top brands? Is there a more profound reason for abandoning long-established top brands and making a switch, like the cereal products of Bargain Brand are actually much better than the ones being sold by top brands and the cost is not a major factor for the switch? The survey is to be done in order to conclude, what is the actual cause of the switch, as such a cause might not work on the marketing of the other products if it is specifically related to cereals.
Secondly, Is the trend of customer preference of the Bargain Brand Cereals over the other top brands sustainable over a long time? Is this a temporary uptick which the company is observing and overestimating by extrapolating a similar situation in the future as well, or is it due to a temporary hiccup the top brands are facing in their manufacturing process, which will be resolved soon, resulting in them being back on track again? The time period over which the claim that top brands are not able to compete is being made is necessary as evidence. Answer to such a question is crucial because if the board of directors does go ahead with the current estimation of the recommendation and sanction it, the impact for the other products might not the same, it might even happen the cereals which are currently profitable will also lose value.
Lastly, What are the market requirements and demands for these "other food products" which the memo mentions to begin marketing? Are they similar to cereals, if not, such an extrapolation cannot be drawn from the results of marketing cereals. Such a conclusion might not lead to fruitful results in the marketing of the other food products. If the other food products were fruits, vegetables, etc. The vitality period of such products is limited as these cannot be stored for longer periods, which completely changes the decisions to be made on marketing such products versus the cereals which have a longer shelf life.
Thus, the recommendation to the board of directors must be supported by answering the above important questions and by providing more information supporting the answers. Without which the recommendation would not be much effective for the Bargain Brand Company.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 450 350
No. of Characters: 2178 1500
No. of Different Words: 202 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.606 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.84 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.739 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.717 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.733 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.367 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.615 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, first, firstly, however, if, lastly, second, secondly, so, thus, well
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 35.0 19.6327345309 178% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 13.0 28.8173652695 45% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2241.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 450.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 4.98 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6057793516 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82739770421 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 204.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.453333333333 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 682.2 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 70.9880876891 57.8364921388 123% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.0625 119.503703932 117% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.125 23.324526521 121% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.3125 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.247929921706 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0960501127877 0.0743258471296 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.10325477724 0.0701772020484 147% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.154308365469 0.128457276422 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.078814597611 0.0628817314937 125% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.1 14.3799401198 112% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 51.52 48.3550499002 107% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.9 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.