The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books.
"We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because it is known for its wide selection of books on all subjects. Clearly, opening the café would attract more customers. Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the children's book section, which will probably become less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten. Opening a café will allow Monarch to attract more customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened its own café."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The Board of Directors of Monarch Books recommends opening a café in the store replacing the children's book section. The board claims that doing so will attract more customers because the percentage of children's population has been on a decline. According to the recommendation, opening a café in the store will help the Monarch Books store compete better with Regal Books, which opened its own café recently as well. However, in order to judge the viability of the recommendation, the board needs to answer three crucial questions regarding the plan.
First, will the addition of a café actually attract more customers? In the prompt, the board of directors makes this assertion without providing any basis for the argument. Having an associated café in the premises might tarnish the image of the Monarch Book Store as "The Book Store", which might be a turn off for the hardcore book enthusiasts. If these hardcore readers are the regular customers of the book store, and are responsible for a large chunk of their sales, alienating them might prove detrimental to their cause. Sure, having an adjoining café might attract more coffee drinkers, but its not guaranteed that they will buy the books as well. In this case, having a café will negatively affect their revenues.
Further, does a reducing percentage of children imply a corresponding reduction in the sale of children's books as well? The prompt implicitly assumes that because the percentage of young children is reducing, the corresponding books sales are reducing as well, which might be a fallacy. First of all, a reducing percentage does not mean a reducing number of children. It's possible that owing to better health-care facilities, the life expectancy has been on a rise, which has made the percentage population of children lower. It might be the case that children contribute more to the book sales than adults. For a lot of families, it is possible that the adults only buy books when accompanying their children to buy books for them. Therefore, shutting the door on children will not only stop the revenues coming from the sales of children's books but might also affect the sales of other sections as well. This shows that trading the children's section for café might not be a good plan without proper consideration of its direct and indirect consequences.
Finally, did the idea of having a café benefit the Regal Books? The board's recommendation seems to be inspired from the step taken at their rival bookstore and in an attempt to outstrip them in terms of revenues. However, it would be inane to simply follow the other store blindly without actually looking at the effects of the action in their store. If it is found that opening a café did not benefit the Regal Books Store, the ground on which the recommendation is based will lose its merit. Furthermore, even if it worked for them doesn't mean it'll work for Monarch Books as well. As explained before, it might alienate an important section of their consumers. Also, it will be beneficial to know how did the Regal Books store implement the idea. Did they also replace the children's section? If it is indeed the case that the children's section was scrubbed off, it might mean that the Monarch Books has a chance to make more sales in the children's section than before. Therefore, letting go of the children's section might be an even worse idea in this case.
In order to make a complete all-round assessment of the recommendation, the board of directors should answer the above questions. Answering these questions with proper evidence and a cogent line of argument will help the board to come up with a more clear plan to bolster their sales. Even though on surface, the board's argument seems reasonable, a more incisive evaluation shows that it has a few assumptions that if proved unwarranted, will render their recommendation useless, or even detrimental. Hence, before implementing the idea, a more thorough analysis and survey of the situation needs to be done.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 32 15
No. of Words: 677 350
No. of Characters: 3270 1500
No. of Different Words: 263 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.101 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.83 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.667 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 166 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 76 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.156 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.847 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.473 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 69, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'boards'' or 'board's'?
Suggestion: boards'; board's
...ing a café benefit the Regal Books? The boards recommendation seems to be inspired fro...
^^^^^^
Line 13, column 535, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...Furthermore, even if it worked for them doesnt mean itll work for Monarch Books as wel...
^^^^^^
Line 17, column 314, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'boards'' or 'board's'?
Suggestion: boards'; board's
...heir sales. Even though on surface, the boards argument seems reasonable, a more incis...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, furthermore, hence, however, if, look, regarding, so, therefore, thus, well, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 23.0 12.9520958084 178% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 87.0 55.5748502994 157% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3369.0 2260.96107784 149% => OK
No of words: 675.0 441.139720559 153% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.99111111111 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.09713273454 4.56307096286 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74028024159 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 279.0 204.123752495 137% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.413333333333 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1010.7 705.55239521 143% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 32.0 19.7664670659 162% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.5171274897 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.28125 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.09375 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.9375 5.70786347227 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 18.0 8.20758483034 219% => Less positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.288800899511 0.218282227539 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0833133595894 0.0743258471296 112% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0781776153609 0.0701772020484 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.189100554505 0.128457276422 147% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0965582368393 0.0628817314937 154% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.66 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.