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."
The above argument is presented by the vice president of a men’s clothing company – Sartorian, which affirms the increase in profits of the company on resuming the manufacturing and selling of alpaca overcoats after the duration of 5 years. Although the facts and supporting statements mentioned by the vice president in the argument seem convincing, they are specious and a further analysis of the argument needs to be done to come to any conclusion.
Firstly, the vice president mentions that the production of alpaca overcoats was discontinued because of absence of any reliable supplies of high quality wool fabric. Even though the argument states that a new supplier has been found by the company, it doesn’t mention anything about the quality of fabric. Nor does it make any comparisons between the suppliers. If the quality of fabric is not on par with the earlier one or for that matter, with the ones available in the market from other manufacturers, the demand for it will be too less to make any considerable change on the profits of the company.
Secondly, the vice president is comparing two scenarios separated by a gap of 5 years. Many things might have changed across this time gap. Usually, the fashion trends don’t remain the same over the years and there is a high chance of alpaca overcoats having gone out of trend. This might be the very reason why Sartorian’s major competitor has stopped producing alpaca overcoats in the first place. In that case we can easily assume that the demand for it would be too low and the conclusion of the vice president can be negated. The author should make a market analysis of the demand of the overcoats and try to find out reasons why the major competitor has stopped its production.
Also, the statement of the author regarding the correlation between prices of other types of clothing and alpaca overcoats is not credible. Prices in the market solely depend on the demand for the items. The brand name of any company will matter only when there is a demand for the items produced by the company. Different types of clothing have different popularity in the market. Only because one kind of clothing is being profitable for the company doesn’t insinuate or conclude anything about the profitability of any other kinds of clothing sold by the same company. The author must add some more facts to support his theory.
Lastly, the author is assuming that the only producer of alpaca overcoats apart from Sartorian is their major competitors. Even if there is a scope of profitability in producing the overcoats, the author cant directly guarantee profits on the basis that the competitor has stopped producing the coats. There might be other small producers in the market. If the popularity and prices of the overcoats sold by these small producers are comparable, then even they can pose a threat to the sales of the same.
Thus, in conclusion, the argument produced by the vice president is not cogent enough and needs more supporting evidence. If only proper market and situation analysis along with the comparisons of available fabric with the ones used 5 years back as well as those used by other vendors is provided, can a proper conclusion be found.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 550 350
No. of Characters: 2618 1500
No. of Different Words: 230 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.843 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.76 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.588 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.917 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.099 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.458 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.303 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.531 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.079 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 17, column 205, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
... in producing the overcoats, the author cant directly guarantee profits on the basis...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, if, lastly, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, thus, well, apart from, in conclusion, kind of, as well as, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 78.0 55.5748502994 140% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2718.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 548.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 4.9598540146 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83832613839 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73296505296 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 236.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.430656934307 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 864.9 705.55239521 123% => 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: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.2191740084 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.25 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.8333333333 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.29166666667 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.141154945422 0.218282227539 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0401609563804 0.0743258471296 54% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.05178092603 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0759469280391 0.128457276422 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0485264884396 0.0628817314937 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.3 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.75 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.