The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Health Naturally, a small but expanding chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.
"Our previous experience has been that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build one of our new stores in Plainsville, which clearly has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise equipment are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight-training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville's schoolchildren are required to participate in a program called Fitness for Life, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age."
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.
The vice president of a health product store chain, Health Naturally, plans to build a new store in Plainsville for the inhabitants are believed to be motivated to live a healthy life. However, the argument is replete with holes and questionable assumptions, neglects a range of factors, confounds sales with profitability, and thus, is not strong enough to support launching a new store at Plainsville.
Health Naturally has previously experienced profits in areas where the population was highly health conscious. Citing this, they plan to replicate profitability in Plainsville which they believe has many such residents. This fails to quantify "many" and thus, is vague. How many is "many"? Is it enough for a store like Health Naturally to generate profits at expected(average) sales? In addition, merchant reports from Plainsville of all-time high sales of running shoes and exercise equipment point towards high number of health conscious residents. This conclusion is flawed. High sales might be because of a bulk buyer or rebuys from same customer.
Even if the aforementioned number favors Health Naturally, the argument falls short of covering other factors which might have led to profitability in such areas. What if there was little or no competition for Health Naturally? What was the economic status and propensity to pay of the locality? A deeper knowledge of the potential customers will set the argument on a relatively sound footing.
What motivates Health Naturally is the success of local health club which, once, almost went out of business. However, one might think of the club as a competition or barrier to entry for Health Naturally. The club seems to be popular with the people, the very people Health Naturally aims their products at. Bolstered by a five year experience in the area, they might hinder Health Naturally's growth in the locality. The possibility of the club being a competitor must be addressed by collecting information on the operations of the club.
Finally, the vice president thinks of adding schoolchildren to the category of its customers. The basis of this decision being a program students participate in which preaches the benefits of regular exercise. It is nowhere mentioned that the program promotes consumption of health products to children. It might be the opposite. The objectives of the program must be considered to arrive at a decision.
The vice president's plan to launch a new store in Plainsville is undeniably well intentioned. However, the argument failed to take into account the number of interested customers as well as existing competition in the area.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-appeared…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 421 350
No. of Characters: 2151 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.53 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.109 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.931 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.192 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.989 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.346 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.269 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.506 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.053 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, however, if, so, thus, well, in addition, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 13.0 28.8173652695 45% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2237.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 421.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 5.3135391924 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52971130743 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.10244875911 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.527315914489 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 692.1 705.55239521 98% => 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: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 22.8473053892 70% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 45.1069078534 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 86.0384615385 119.503703932 72% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.1923076923 23.324526521 69% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.34615384615 5.70786347227 41% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.231932446317 0.218282227539 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0631396289229 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0730261952585 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.120570104123 0.128457276422 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0514354776924 0.0628817314937 82% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.7 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.24 48.3550499002 114% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.22 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.86 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 11.1389221557 75% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.