"For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however, all of the five best-selling cheeses at our newest store were domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, a recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company can reduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in all of our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."
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 memo argues that to improve profits, it is the best to focus on stocking domestic cheeses but discontinue other kinds of imported cheese. To justify his remark, the manager points out that at the newest store, the most popular cheese last year was domestic cheddar cheese from Wisconsin. More information from a survey showed that more people prefer domestic cheese. The arguer has made many assumptions based on the evidence so that the conclusion obtained at the end is not cogent without further clarification.
The information of domestic cheddar cheese being the best-selling one was reported by the newest store; the manager assumes that the other stores located around the United States will have the same customer feedback. In fact, it might be only the customers at the newest store who like domestic cheddar cheese the best while the other four best-selling cheeses still maintain their popularity in other stores. If this is true, cutting the inventory of other cheeses before knowing more about the sales at other locations is the worst decision to make. It not only reduces the variety of cheeses that customers used to like about this store, but also limits the possible profit from other cheeses.
Furthermore, the survey that supported domestic cheddar cheese was gaining preference can be misleading too. Without knowing who the subscribers of the magazine are as well as the reliability of the survey, the manager perfunctorily assumes that the result from the magazine is correct and can be applied to his chain stores in the United States. It is a world-wide magazine, which means the subscribers are from everywhere. If the customers are mostly from Europe and some Asian countries, the generalization of the result to the customers in the United States will be fallacious. Americans might still like the varieties of imported cheese more than domestic cheeses. The suggestion to discontinuing the inventory of other kinds of imported cheese but concentrated on domestic cheeses will put the business in jeopardy.
As the manager wants to improve profits, lowering expenses in cheese stocking is not the best way to achieve the goal. Profits come from the sales of cheeses; therefore, increasing the revenue would be a better way to gain more profits. However, his advice is reducing the types of cheeses that the store may have been famous for, which may indirectly mitigates the expansion of business. With the focus on domestic cheeses only, customers who used to buy imported cheeses will not purchase products from the store any more. The suggestion lowers the revenue while, in fact, wasting money on storing only domestic cheeses.
In summary, profits should be gained from expanding the business, attracting more customers, not cutting expense. Assuming the newest store is a good representative of other stores in the United States, and generalizing a random survey result from an international magazine, do not warrant the conclusion. More evidence need to be provided.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, therefore, well, while, in fact, in summary, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalization wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2530.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 487.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.19507186858 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69766713281 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6999828142 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.451745379877 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 800.1 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.2981043112 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.0 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.1363636364 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.90909090909 5.70786347227 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.365567022744 0.218282227539 167% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.11671611446 0.0743258471296 157% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0814012232865 0.0701772020484 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.219279996405 0.128457276422 171% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0750614426769 0.0628817314937 119% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.46 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 115.0 98.500998004 117% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => 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 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.