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 compan

Essay topics:

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.

The author concludes that Bargain Brand should extend its business activities in direction to other food products instead of focusing exclusively on breakfast cereals. The author uses the strategy adopted by the company last year, when it started to sell cereals, as evidence to support that conclusion. However, the author makes several major assumptions that need to be addressed before the decision maker, whoever it might be, could accept or reject the argument.

First, the author assumes that the strategy adopted last year, when the company started its operations, it is still valid. The author assumes implicitly that the market conditions now are the same as they were in the previous year. If the economy is currently through the lower part of the economic cycle the decision to expand Bargain Brand operations could turn into a disaster.

Furthermore, it assumes not only that the state of the economy is the same, but also that the cereals market behaves in the same way other food products market. This might be completely flawed as the author actually does not argue what food products should be considered in the proposed strategy. Maybe other breakfast products may have the same characteristics as cereals have, but if this strategy is applied for other food products, as meat or industrialized food products, for instance, it can reveal to be a huge mistake,

Finally, the memo on the board of directors of Bargain Brand Cereals implicitly assumes that the margins on other food products are at least as large as the margins in the cereal market. Then, we should ask if it is it possible to introduce the other food products, whatever they might be, at a very low price as the company did for cereals. It is possible that the margins in the cereal business are much larger than in the general food market. In this case the idea presented in the memo could actually be impossible to be implemented.

I can concede that what the author has presented is a potentially good idea, but we still do not have enough evidence and information to conclude that this is the best way to go. Therefore, more evidence is needed in order to support that claim since the argument, as it stands now, is flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. Therefore, it will be important that at least the specification of what food products the company intend to expand to and a margins and an economic scenario study is presented.

Votes
Average: 5.9 (3 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 233, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...same as they were in the previous year. If the economy is currently through the lo...
^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, at least, for instance, in the same way

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2050.0 2260.96107784 91% => OK
No of words: 416.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.92788461538 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51620172871 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65354892253 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 187.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.449519230769 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 639.0 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => 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: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.1021517156 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.666666667 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.7333333333 23.324526521 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.0 5.70786347227 158% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => 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: 0.166140244921 0.218282227539 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0552557690888 0.0743258471296 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0505554034772 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0975348864213 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0619828645137 0.0628817314937 99% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.7 14.3799401198 109% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.53 48.3550499002 109% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.6 12.197005988 103% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.61 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.01 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 416 350
No. of Characters: 1984 1500
No. of Different Words: 178 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.516 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.769 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.573 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 113 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.948 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.363 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.61 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.118 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5