The following appeared in a memorandum issued by the strategic planning department at
Omni Inc.
"Mesa Foods, a manufacturer of snack foods that currently markets its products within a
relatively small region of the country, has strong growth potential. Mesa enjoyed a 20 percent
increase in profits last year, and its best-selling product, Diabolique Salsa, has had increased
sales over each of the past three years. Since Omni Inc. is interested in reaching 14-to-25 year
olds, the age group that consumes the most snack food, we should buy Mesa Foods, and
concentrate in particular on marketing Diabolique Salsa throughout the country."
The strategic planning department of the Omni Inc. suggests on purchasing Mesa Foods and focus their marketing resources to sell the Diabloique Salsa by the Mesa Foods since Omni Inc. largely caters to consumers of the age 14-to-25, that apparently consumes the most snack food. The author's suggestion is based on the 20 percent profit accretion of Mesa Foods the previous year, along with the purported popularity of it putatively best selling product, Diabolique Sala which has shown increased sales over the last three years. The author must clarify the following three concerns one might have about the suggestion they provide which otherwise would weaken the argument.
Does the success of a company in a relatively small region of the country ensure high turn outs,or "strong growth potential" when extrapolated to countrywide sales. Perhaps, due to the food preferences of the consumers in that relatively small region of popularity, the products of Mesa Foods perfectly matches the gustatory preferences of the people. It might be possible that the people belonging to other regions might have different food habits and cullinary preferences and Mesa Food's products might not get the same level of preference. There might be an erractic sale of the Mesa Food's products accross the country which can swing towards both ways as a profit or loss to Omni Inc. The author must encourage and base his argument on extensive country wide surveys that would take into account the people's preferences for different foods including ones sold by Mesa Foods.
The 20 percent increase in profits of Mesa Foods doesnot indicate much about the popularity nor the potential of the company. It is possible that the profits Mesa Foods made from the previous years were not significant enough at the first place. This would insinuate that the 20 percent increase in profit would also refer to profit that might not be enough to base the putative assumption being made by the author about the company's potential. This elicits a proper investigation or a clarification from the author to indicate the previous sales and profit statistics of the company or else the percentages mentioned are deemed vague, weakening the argument.
The success of Diabolique Salsa as the best selling food and with increasing sales over last three years is vague without in statistics cited. Perhaps, the increasing sales of Diabolique Salsa is not significant enough to consider it to be marketed by Omni Inc. Without information about the actual sales figures of the product, promoting it country wide would most probably gain nothing more that indifference from the people. The authors must ensure that the sales figures are encouraging enough to pursue the marketting of Diabolique Salsa.
In conclusion, the argument stands weak based on the reasons stated above. The author should collect more data on the sales and profits of Mesa Foods and especially for their product Diabolique Salsa before country wide marketting. This would help the strategic planning department of Omni Inc to take a more informed and secured decision and avoid losses.
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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 506 350
No. of Characters: 2585 1500
No. of Different Words: 222 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.743 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.109 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.592 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 144 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.765 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.389 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.235 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.362 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.362 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 284, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ently consumes the most snack food. The authors suggestion is based on the 20 percent p...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 530, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...reased sales over the last three years. The author must clarify the following three...
^^^
Line 2, column 96, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , or
...ion of the country ensure high turn outs,or 'strong growth potential' whe...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, apparently, first, if, so, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2627.0 2260.96107784 116% => OK
No of words: 505.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20198019802 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74048574033 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67311624069 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.453465346535 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 815.4 705.55239521 116% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.4049512567 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.095238095 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0476190476 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.19047619048 5.70786347227 38% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.321049248396 0.218282227539 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110181490646 0.0743258471296 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0844932641231 0.0701772020484 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.183466065352 0.128457276422 143% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0924999913754 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.52 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.