The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores.
"Because of declining profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore's ten movie-rental stores. Raising prices is not a good option, since we are famous for our low prices. Instead, we should reduce our operating hours. Last month our store in downtown Marston reduced its hours by closing at 6:00 p.m. rather than 9:00 p.m. and reduced its overall inventory by no longer stocking any DVD released more than five years ago. Since we have received very few customer complaints about these new policies, we should now adopt them at all other Movies Galore stores as our best strategies for improving profits."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The above argument states about Movies Galore declining profit and suggest some ideas in order to generate profit. But the suggestion proposed have made some unwarranted assumptions, unless the assumptions are outlined clearly there are high chance that the implementation of the ideas in the desire to make profit will yield more loss and make permanent damage on the business rather than increasing profit.
The argument understands that to generate more profit operational expense needs to be curtailed but the argument fails to acknowledge that more sales with revenue also contributes in increasing profit. It has been stated that one of the store has reduced it working hours and also it has reduced it inventory. Both the activity have immense impact of the business itself. Since all the business run on some of the unique selling products, which in majority cases includes customer service availability and product availability. Going to shop if a customer face availability issues and gets only 3 of its 5 desired products the customer eventually will move towards other shop where he can find all the product he desired at one place. This might have a serious impact on business in the long run and the sustainability of the company will be questioned based on its impaired market reputation unavailability of products. So to decide whether to keep 5 years old released DVD to reduce inventory cost the company must make a survey on whether those DVD's are still on demand. Because in case of movies there are still loads of old cinema's people look for. So, a proper survey and listing of product demand is a must before getting rid of older one.
Secondly the passage states about limiting the service hour of he shop. This solely depends on the locality it is serving. If the entire locality sleeps on 6 pm, then there is no point in keeping the store open till 9pm. Life style varies from one stated or locality to another. In some areas working hour ends at 6 pm - 7 pm and people reach out to stores after that time to have a good movie DVD for their night to enjoy. Since the trend of people vary so without proper information reaching to any conclusion regarding the working hour will be imprudent since these will impact the direct sales and any loss of sales is a loss in revenue and ultimately a declining profit for good.
The argument states that low price is their specialty and that is why thy cannot raise their price. Well low price is a ostensible term which is dependent on the product prices of the competitor as well. There is no other information on the competitors prices nor there is information when the price of this very product were set. It could be one of the scenario that the product prices were set before 10 years ago as when the price difference between them and their competitor was 10 bucks and now it is 100 bucks which call for immediate actions and a raise in price since the business cannot sustain at any low cost where the service, utility and commodity prices raised and also increasing the employee salary as well.
To sum up we can say that unless the argument clearly states the evidence supporting its claim to reduce the working hour, inventory reduction and no price increase policy any further steps in implementing these policy will have long term impact in the business. So these unstated assumptions calls for answer which will help take the right decision to increase profitability and sustainable business.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 599 350
No. of Characters: 2839 1500
No. of Different Words: 277 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.947 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.74 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.538 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 135 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.043 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.448 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.609 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.27 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.483 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 300, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'inventories'?
Suggestion: inventories
...orking hours and also it has reduced it inventory. Both the activity have immense impact ...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 403, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...s itself. Since all the business run on some of the unique selling products, which in major...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 556, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...vailability. Going to shop if a customer face availability issues and gets only 3...
^^
Line 7, column 119, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...ot raise their price. Well low price is a ostensible term which is dependent on t...
^
Line 9, column 207, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this policy' or 'these policies'?
Suggestion: this policy; these policies
...olicy any further steps in implementing these policy will have long term impact in the busin...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 235, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'termed'.
Suggestion: termed
...mplementing these policy will have long term impact in the business. So these unstat...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, if, look, regarding, second, secondly, so, still, then, well, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 22.0 11.1786427146 197% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2895.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 599.0 441.139720559 136% => OK
Chars per words: 4.83305509182 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.94716853372 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56629380409 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 285.0 204.123752495 140% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.475792988314 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 936.0 705.55239521 133% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 84.3120273651 57.8364921388 146% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.869565217 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.0434782609 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.5652173913 5.70786347227 62% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.175586638922 0.218282227539 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0481013289886 0.0743258471296 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0482989535032 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0910759862462 0.128457276422 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0256623304411 0.0628817314937 41% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.03 12.5979740519 88% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.98 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.