The following appeared as part of a promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette to grocery stores in the Marston area:
"Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. Consider the results of a study conducted last month. Thirty sale items from a store in downtown Marston were advertised in The Gazette for four days. Each time one or more of the 30 items was purchased, clerks asked whether the shopper had read the ad. Two-thirds of the 200 shoppers asked answered in the affirmative. Furthermore, more than half the customers who answered in the affirmative spent over $100 at the store."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
In attempt to sell advertising space to grocery stores, the author of a campaign claims that the grocery stores will increase their sales if they advertise the discounted items in Daily Gazette. The line of reasoning is that two-third of the shoppers asked for a survey confirmed that they read the ad and half of those spent more than $100 at the store. However, I think this argument is not convincing because the author fails to address many important factors.
Firstly, the author made an assumption that the store in downtown Marston only advertised in Daily Gazette in order to boost the sales. In the commercial market, there’re a lot of channel available for grocery stores to promote their products, such as email advertising, magazine advertising and radio advertising, etc. It’s very likely that the store promoted their products on multiple media planform, rather than only advertising in Daily Gazette. Therefore, there’s no guarantee that those who came to buy products at the store were attracted by the ad on Daily Gazette, but not by the ad on other media.
Secondly, there’s no evidence showing that the sales of those advertised products is actually growing. It’s possible that the shoppers who answered in the affirmative just came to purchase the products for daily demand, instead of being driven by the ad in Daily Gazette. So, the author would have to provide evidence to prove the sales of advertised products is increasing actually.
Finally, the author mentioned that half of the customers who answered in affirmative spent more than $100 in the store, so that it’s concluded the ad is useful for increasing the sales. However, it could be possible that the number of shopper who spent over $100 is more than that of those who take the survey. The conducted survey only targeted 200 shoppers, it’s hard to decide these are the main force to boost the sales of the store in a certain period.
In sum, this argument is not convincing because it omitted many factors that should be taken into consideration. The author would have to prove that the advertising in Daily Gazette is the only campaign conducted by the store, the sales of advertised items has increased and those who read the ad were the main force to boost the sales.
Comments
Sentence: In the commercial
Sentence: In the commercial market, there're a lot of channel available for grocery stores to promote their products, such as email advertising, magazine advertising and radio advertising, etc. It's very likely that the store promoted their products on multiple media planform, rather than only advertising in Daily Gazette.
Error: planform Suggestion: platform
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argument 1 -- not exactly. suppose Daily Gazette is the only ad. then how to argue.
suggested arguments:
1. it may work only for last month.
2. suppose it works for this store, it doesn't mean it will work for other business.
3. one sample is not big enough.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 385 350
No. of Characters: 1832 1500
No. of Different Words: 160 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.43 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.758 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.467 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 119 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.038 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.643 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.408 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.635 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.072 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 177, Rule ID: A_LOT_OF_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun channel seems to be countable; consider using: 'a lot of channels'.
Suggestion: a lot of channels
...In the commercial market, there're a lot of channel available for grocery stores to promote...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 271, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... sales of advertised items has increased and those who read the ad were the main ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, therefore, third, i think, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1915.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 384.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.98697916667 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.4267276788 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67103600172 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 169.0 204.123752495 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.440104166667 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 601.2 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 35.4172588186 57.8364921388 61% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.666666667 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.6 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.26666666667 5.70786347227 127% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => 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: 0.304022154777 0.218282227539 139% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.113377529599 0.0743258471296 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.110415162933 0.0701772020484 157% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.185159669821 0.128457276422 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0768994057714 0.0628817314937 122% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.96 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.0 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.