The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of marketing at Dura-Sock, Inc.
"A recent study of our customers suggests that our company is wasting the money it spends on its patented Endure manufacturing process, which ensures that our socks are strong enough to last for two years. We have always advertised our use of the Endure process, but the new study shows that despite our socks' durability, our average customer actually purchases new Dura-Socks every three months. Furthermore, our customers surveyed in our largest market, northeastern United States cities, say that they most value Dura-Socks' stylish appearance and availability in many colors. These findings suggest that we can increase our profits by discontinuing use of the Endure manufacturing process."
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.
In the memo from the vice president, he argues that the company can increase the profits by discontinuing the use of endure manufacturing process. The author supports his argument with the following assumptions, that if not substantiated, dramatically weaken the persuasiveness of the argument.
First of all, the author presumes, without any evidences, that the customers purchase the socks every two months because of its low durability. However, this may not be the case. It may be possible that the customers wanted to wear new style of socks and thus made those purchase, despite the socks being intact. It is also possible that the socks might have damaged due to bites of rodents and pets. Perhaps, the socks has been lost and thus the customers made the purchase. If these scenarios have merit, then the authors argument does not hold water.
Secondly, the authors claims that it is the appearance and availability in variant colors of their socks that made the customers buy the product, based on survey of the largest market. However, this may not necessarily be true. The survey may not be representative of all the markets. Also, if the survey was representative, valuing the appearance and availability of different colors does not necessarily mean that they do not value the durability at all. It is possible that the survey had multiple choice question which lacks durability in the option and forced the customers to choose as such. If this is true, author's claim is not warranted and his suggestions will not be helpful.
Finally, the author assumes that the Endure manufacturing process is costly and concludes that profits can be increased if the manufacturing process is changed. However, this might not be the case. Perhaps, the Endure manufacturing process is the cheapest among all the manufacturing process. If this is the case, discontinuing the use of endure manufacturing process, and adoptiong another technique may incur more cost, and will decrease the profit.
In conclusion, it is possible that the conclusion made by the vice president will have intended results. However, as it stands now, the argument relied on several unwarranted assumptions that if proved wrong will severly weaken the argument. So, the author should provide additional evidences regarding the veracity of the above mentioned assumptions.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 378 350
No. of Characters: 1916 1500
No. of Different Words: 173 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.409 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.069 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.852 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.894 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.857 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.311 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.311 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.066 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 100, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...hat Dura-Sock has been trying to patent the Endure manufacturing process and wasting a lot...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 745, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'sports'' or 'sport's'?
Suggestion: sports'; sport's
...rson might be different. For example, a sports person may use socks for most of the ti...
^^^^^^
Line 2, column 979, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... of these scenarios hold true, then the authors contention that everyone who uses the D...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 53, Rule ID: THE_SUPERLATIVE[2]
Message: A determiner is probably missing here: 'of the largest'.
Suggestion: of the largest
...l, the author claims that the customers of largest market, that is people form the northea...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 21, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'trues'?
Suggestion: trues
...are not warranted. Finally, even if it true that the discontinuing patenting can be...
^^^^
Line 4, column 381, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...sertions might to be valid. There should at least 100 or 200 people who have been...
^^
Line 5, column 100, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...ue regarding discontinuing in patenting the Endure manufacturing process and rather invest...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, regarding, second, so, then, thus, as to, at least, for example, in summary, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 24.0 12.9520958084 185% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2848.0 2260.96107784 126% => OK
No of words: 582.0 441.139720559 132% => OK
Chars per words: 4.89347079038 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.91168771031 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77308515899 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.396907216495 0.468620217663 85% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 884.7 705.55239521 125% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.2638216897 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.826086957 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.3043478261 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.5652173913 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
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: 0.201696423265 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0688902251292 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0669067014532 0.0701772020484 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127763504737 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0637958088761 0.0628817314937 101% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.38 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.83 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.