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 difficulty obtaining reliable supplies of high-quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our popular alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. Given the outcry from our customers when we discontinued this product and the fact that none of our competitors offers a comparable product, we can expect pent-up consumer demand for our alpaca coats. This demand and the overall increase in clothing prices will make Sartorian's alpaca overcoats more profitable than ever before."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
As per the memo from vice president of Sartorian, there would be a steep increase in company's profits, after an old popular product is resumed. But this assertion takes into account a number of assumptions, three of which are presented below.
Firstly, as per Vice-President, a product which was in popular demand five years ago, will still be highly appreciated among the public. But, this does not take into consideration the fact that, fashion is highly volatile. Once a popular fashion five years ago, might be obscured by now. In today's cosmopolitan world, trends are very short-lived, and the access to social media disseminates a change in trend really fast. Thus, it would not be wise to have a narrow and myopic approach in defining the success of a clothing product. Therefore, this decision of continuing a paused clothing product, incorporates an assumption that there will not be a change in popular fashion, and needs to be substantiated with evidence to hold any water.
Secondly, even if we discount the change in the popular fashion statement, the Vice-President emphasised that a new fabric supplier has resulted in continuation of production. But, there is no comparative analysis provided regarding the quality of the newly supplied fabric with that of the fabric previously in use. As per the current consumer needs, apart for the aesthetics, the buyers look for a utilitarian use as well. The quality plays an indispensable role in acceptability of a good as a primary choice, and consequently reflecting in company's sales. Maybe the new fabric is of a low-grade quality and would result in complaints filled by the consumers. Thus, it might tarnish the reputation of the firm instead of resulting profitable. Therefore, an effective proof is needed to corroborate the assumption that the new fabric would be of estimable quality.
Thirdly, if we assume that the quality and the trend would be in favour of the company, there should be an accurate estimate provided regarding the feasibility of profits. As the prices of raw material keep on increasing, the profit margins maintained by the company declines. Once a profitable product might not be promising today, due to increase in the cost of production which might be affected by the political and economical changes. Therefore, the continuation of the product might lead to loses instead of profits as claimed by the Vice-President. Thus, it essential to plan out the feasibility of profits in the current economic environment, and no evidence provided to support this.
Conclusively, the Vice-President's remark incorporates many underlying assumptions which should be substantiated with evidence to hold true.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 433 350
No. of Characters: 2198 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.562 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.076 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.011 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.619 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.187 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.291 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.502 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.072 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 314, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
...es. Once a profitable product might not be promising today, due to increase in the cost of p...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 421, Rule ID: ECONOMICAL_ECONOMIC[1]
Message: Did you mean 'economic' (=connected with economy)?
Suggestion: economic
... might be affected by the political and economical changes. Therefore, the continuation of...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, first, firstly, if, look, may, really, regarding, second, secondly, so, still, therefore, third, thirdly, thus, well
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2267.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 433.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.23556581986 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56165014514 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.11849106661 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.5103926097 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 714.6 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 33.3204056564 57.8364921388 58% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 107.952380952 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.619047619 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.42857142857 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 17.0 8.20758483034 207% => Less positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.186054396857 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0558153417963 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0483949298965 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.101699732727 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0384727365028 0.0628817314937 61% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.11 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.22 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 126.0 98.500998004 128% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => 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.