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.
While it may seem true that the success story of bargain brand breakfast Cereals could be reproduced in other food products according to the memo, the board of directors had their conclusion based on some unwarranted assumptions, which are illustrated and discussed as below. Before Bargain Brand decides to expand its business to other low-priced food products, they should perform further investigations as suggested below.
The memo states that success in selling low-priced cereal can be reproduced to other food products. It is assuming that all customers tend to purchase the lowest-priced item in all categories of food. However, we don't know whether it is true or not. The possibility that people tend to buy the lowest price cereal is because there is no big difference in the taste of expensive cereal or cheap cereal, therefore, they chose the cheap one. If we were talking about spaghetti, the customers' choice could be different. Unless Bargain Brand has completed the survey of customers' shopping preferences for food products, it is not wise to expand their business for the moment.
In addition, the memo mentioned that there are other companies that started selling cereal at a lower price but are not too competitive to be worried. This claim is not very convincing because it did not clearly state the timing that their competitors started the same strategy. Perhaps the competitors only started their budget brands a week ago so that the customers haven't noticed the change and continue buying Bargain Brand breakfast cereal. Nonetheless, perhaps after one month or six months, the customers notice the other low-price cereal and switch to the competitors' cereal product. As a result, before making the conclusion that the customers will always stick to Bargain Brand's low-price cereal, the managers should be more cautious of the market reaction in terms of times.
To sum up, although the original idea of expanding the business to a low-priced food product is good in terms of trying to dominate the market, the management should try to gather more cogent results of the survey or reliable data on the market trend before making such a decision.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 357 350
No. of Characters: 1783 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.347 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.994 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.628 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.861 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.643 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.354 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.554 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.134 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 214, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
... in all categories of food. However, we dont know whether it is true or not. The pos...
^^^^
Line 9, column 370, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: haven't
...brands a week ago so that the customers havent noticed the change and continue buying ...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, nonetheless, so, therefore, while, in addition, talking about, as a result, it is true, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1829.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 355.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.15211267606 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.34067318298 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67821114135 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.532394366197 0.468620217663 114% => OK
syllable_count: 553.5 705.55239521 78% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.2132925396 57.8364921388 111% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.642857143 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.3571428571 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.57142857143 5.70786347227 150% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.301957947033 0.218282227539 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.109082827644 0.0743258471296 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0620511868593 0.0701772020484 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.179299178012 0.128457276422 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0860741637496 0.0628817314937 137% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.89 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.79 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => 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.