The following was presented as part of a business plan by Apex Corporation.
"To answer the increased demand for artisan coffee, Apex Corporation is releasing a new line of coffee, "Gourmet Select." Apex Corporation will first introduce the coffee into major supermarkets, where it hopes word-of-mouth advertising will sustain sales. After a few months Apex Corp. will run an advertising campaign aimed at television and radio while simultaneously releasing the brand to several major chain restaurants. Based on this strategy, Apex Corporation hopes to make "Gourmet Select" one of the top sellers in the coffee market."
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 given argument about Apex Corporation is lacking copious amounts of data and is flawed for many reasons. Primarily, it is based on the unwarranted assumption that certain advertising tactics will keep its sales alive and support its growth to become the "hot" product in the market. This is not supported by the prompt and hence, renders its main conclusion, invalid.
To begin, the company is banking on the plain assumption that the coffee will advertise itself. We do not even know whether the increased demands of artisan coffee would be satisfied by bringing in an alternate product into the market, let alone if "word-of-mouth" would help the sales stay afloat. Had the argument included facts about the specifics of the "in-demand" coffee, it would be clear whether Apex Corporation's new coffee line would be the hot-topic or not. If the high demand artisan coffee was also made by Apex Coporation, then it would be more fair to assume that people would flock to buy it. However, the argument would still have to further prove whether they would be interested in a new line of coffee at all, which if they were not, would be counterintuitive from a sales perspective.
Further, the prompt leaves many other questions unanswered. It suggests that Apex Corp will advertise their new coffee on television and radio, which they hope will cause their sales to skyrocket. How are we supposed to arrive at the conclusion that the target audience for artisan coffee had heard about similar products over television and radio? Suppose the prospective customers had found out about competing artisan coffee grounds via targeted ads on YouTube, or the newspaper, then their attempts at TV and radio advertisement would be futile. Had there been information explicitly stating that people are initially drawn to coffee advertisements on the television, then this argument would have a stronger ground. However, to still assume that the demands of the customers will be met by this product, even if radio and TV ads were initially what reeled them in, would be without basis.
Finally, the argument fails to mention the tentative timeline for which they plan to execute this sale. When will they release the line of coffee? How long will it take before it reaches the supermarkets? When will we see the advertisements on the TV and hear them on the radio? If the entire project were to take approximately six months, then perhaps the increased demand for coffee would remain high. However, if this entire process were to take a year or more, we would not be able to predict fluctuations in the demand. People may not even want artisan coffee anymore, or maybe a competitor would have already released a superior product by then. Nonetheless, this is a significant factor to consider, which the prompt has failed to do.
Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions, lacks clarity and cogency, it fails to make a convincing case that "Gourmet Select" can become close to the number 1 seller in the coffee market.
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: 506 350
No. of Characters: 2457 1500
No. of Different Words: 241 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.743 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.856 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.608 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 173 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.076 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.522 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.299 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.496 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.119 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 757, Rule ID: IF_IS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'is'?
Suggestion: is
...d in a new line of coffee at all, which if they were not, would be counterintuitiv...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, hence, however, if, may, nonetheless, so, still, then, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 25.0 12.9520958084 193% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2570.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 506.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.0790513834 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7428307748 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95314586068 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 250.0 204.123752495 122% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.494071146245 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 797.4 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.2584909283 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.739130435 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.60869565217 5.70786347227 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.251541730052 0.218282227539 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0809763657625 0.0743258471296 109% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0661425655353 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.134650039245 0.128457276422 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0491804567336 0.0628817314937 78% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.18 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.44 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 119.0 98.500998004 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.