The market for the luxury-goods industry is on the decline. Recent reports show that a higher unemployment rate, coupled with consumer fears, has decreased the amount of money the average household spends on both essential and nonessential items, but especially on nonessential items. Since luxury goods are, by nature, nonessential, this market will be the first to decrease in the present economic climate, and luxury retailers should refocus their attention to lower-priced markets.
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 the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The argument that luxury retailers should shift their focus to lower-priced markets since the market for the luxury-goods industry is on the decline is not entirely logically convincing since it ignores certain crucial assumptions.
First, the argument assumes that the sample used in the report is a representative sample. This cannot be confirmed to be true since the argument does not provide information about how this report was taken and about the set of people that were actually interviewed. It could happen that the set of people who were interviewed were of the middle to low economic class and not the high economic class. Also, it could happen that the set of people that were interviewed for the report aren’t the people that previously spent tons on luxury goods. If these cases are to be true, then the argument is flawed, and the conclusion cannot hold.
Second, the argument fails to address whether people are willing to purchase lower-priced non-essential goods in spite of the economic decline. For one, people might not be willing to spend a penny on anything deemed non-essential if the economic decline bites hard on them. Also, some people are obsessed with luxury items and always find a means to keep up such a lifestyle, regardless of what the economy has in store. Such sets of people could go as far as to source loans from banks, just to be able to meet up. It is also possible that these set of people will not settle for anything below luxury or lower-priced markets, so to say. In this case, if such scenarios hold, then the argument is flawed.
Finally, the argument omits the possibility that the decrease in the amount of money an average household spends on non-essential goods could have been low during the period the report was made, regardless of whether there were higher levels of unemployment rates or not. It unwarrantably connects the high unemployment rates and consumer fears as to why people would be unwilling to spend on non-luxurious items. What if people just wanted to save money during the period the report was made? What if the set of people interviewed were saving money to purchase even more luxurious items than they had previously purchased and as such decided not to spend much on luxury goods during this period? These are questions the argument fails to answer, and for which the argument would be flawed if they were true.
Thus, the argument is not completely sound. The reasons provided to support the conclusion is not sufficient to support the conclusion of the argument because the set of people interviewed in the report could tag the luxury goods as essential, and not non-essential as the argument assumes.
In conclusion, the argument might have been strengthened if it provided reasons to show that the sample used in the report was representative, or that people are willing to purchase lower-priced goods amidst the crisis, or that the reasons for the reduction in the luxury market industry were not restricted to the high unemployment rates and consumer fears.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 514 350
No. of Characters: 2481 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.761 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.827 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.669 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 110 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.645 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.85 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.367 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.582 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.137 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, if, second, so, then, thus, as to, in conclusion, in spite of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2546.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 513.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 4.96296296296 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75914943092 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70863293777 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.411306042885 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 791.1 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 75.4733562259 57.8364921388 130% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.3 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.65 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.65 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.237910964568 0.218282227539 109% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0743757440653 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0728366200196 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.13813180213 0.128457276422 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0754572491335 0.0628817314937 120% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.52 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.