The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of video rental stores.“In order to reverse the recent decline in our profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore’s ten video rental stores. Since we are f

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of video rental stores.

“In order to reverse the recent decline in our profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore’s ten video rental stores. Since we are famous for our special bargains, raising our rental prices is not a viable way to improve profits. Last month our store in downtown Marston significantly decreased its operating expenses by closing at 6:00 P.M. rather than 9:00 P.M. and by reducing its stock by eliminating all movies released more than five years ago. Therefore, in order to increase profits without jeopardizing our reputation for offering great movies at low prices, we recommend implementing similar changes in our other nine Movies Galore stores.”

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.

To implement the same changes from one store to nine others of Movies Galore requires a deep analysis into the characteristics of these stores. Three key points of analysis comes to mind. First, a question to discuss is the geographic and demographic environments of the other stores and the similarities with the Marston downtown store. Secondly, 'low prices' is usually a relative measure, thus it is necessary to determine if Movies Galore can maintain their 'low prices' reputation even with a slight price increase. Thirdly, and possibly the most important question is to assess how Marston's profits have changed as a result of the lower operating expenses. In order to increase profits, these questions need to be considered and answered before implementing any recommendation.

Knowing the geographic and demographic similarities and differences between stores can be helpful. The location and the types of customers associated with the Marston chain may not be the same as any of the other nine rental stores. Although it seems that Marston can see strong improvement in costs within their store, it could very well be the case that these improvements may not transfer over to another store. One example could be that Marston's downtown location becomes relatively quiet after 6pm due to the fact that its demographics of their main customers being working class people who like to visit the store around their work hours from 9am to 5pm and as a result, the rush disappears after 6pm. On the other hand, the other nine stores could actually be in much more rural or suburban areas where demand is sporadic, a different demographic of customers, perhaps high school and university students, who come in intermittently during much later hours, especially at around 7pm, 8pm or 9pm when they decide to rent an old movie that is over 10 years old for the night. Such answers to the question of geography and demographics can prove that the recommendation may not work across all nine rental stores.

If the reputation of 'low prices' are a key issue, it would be initially necessary to determine whether these prices need to be low on an absolute or relative basis. For one, maybe it is only necessary to be relatively low, depending on the competition around the store. Perhaps that the other nine stores have very expensive competitors nearby and can afford to increase their prices up to 90% of their competitors' levels, when they are only at 80% for example. Thus, this simple assessment can be a better alternative to increase profits and maintain the company's reputation for low prices without the need to decrease operating expenses.

Finally, it is important to find out how Marston's profits have changed after their 'cost-cutting improvements'. Possibly, closing early and removing movies older than 5 years has been actually a poor decision, hurting profits significantly. Their customers actually dislike the early closing hours and miss the only movies, thus decreasing the demand and sales for their products. As a result, it is crucial to take the final profit outcome of Marston into consideration before making any changes to the other stores. A full analysis needs to be completed before an expansion of the idea.

In conclusion, it is vital to determine the geographic and demographic context for each and every store, to consider alternatives such as 'low relative prices' rather than 'low absolute prices', and to assess Marston's profits.

Votes
Average: 8.3 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'finally', 'first', 'if', 'may', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'third', 'thirdly', 'thus', 'well', 'for example', 'in conclusion', 'such as', 'as a result', 'on the other hand']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.233009708738 0.25644967241 91% => OK
Verbs: 0.129449838188 0.15541462614 83% => OK
Adjectives: 0.108414239482 0.0836205057962 130% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0566343042071 0.0520304965353 109% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0323624595469 0.0272364105082 119% => OK
Prepositions: 0.113268608414 0.125424944231 90% => OK
Participles: 0.0275080906149 0.0416121511921 66% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.81167153153 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0453074433657 0.026700313972 170% => OK
Particles: 0.00161812297735 0.001811407834 89% => OK
Determiners: 0.101941747573 0.113004496875 90% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0210355987055 0.0255425247493 82% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0129449838188 0.0127820249294 101% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3462.0 2731.13054187 127% => OK
No of words: 568.0 446.07635468 127% => OK
Chars per words: 6.09507042254 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.88187981987 4.57801047555 107% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.378521126761 0.378187486979 100% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.279929577465 0.287650121315 97% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.207746478873 0.208842608468 99% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.130281690141 0.135150697306 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81167153153 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Unique words: 268.0 207.018472906 129% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.471830985915 0.469332199767 101% => OK
Word variations: 56.6609243875 52.1807786196 109% => OK
How many sentences: 22.0 20.039408867 110% => OK
Sentence length: 25.8181818182 23.2022227129 111% => OK
Sentence length SD: 69.1447308307 57.7814097925 120% => OK
Chars per sentence: 157.363636364 141.986410481 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.8181818182 23.2022227129 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.772727272727 0.724660767414 107% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 53.8111395647 51.9672348444 104% => OK
Elegance: 1.71111111111 1.8405768891 93% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.309281354228 0.441005458295 70% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.104720181425 0.135418324435 77% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0605863513466 0.0829849096947 73% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.537721633461 0.58762219726 92% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.149504964411 0.147661913831 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.129690447112 0.193483328276 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0653660535487 0.0970749176394 67% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.391854517389 0.42659136922 92% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0865892407138 0.0774707102158 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.206277477794 0.312017818177 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0724844154537 0.0698173142475 104% => OK

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.33743842365 132% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.87684729064 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.82512315271 124% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 3.0 5.36822660099 56% => OK
Neutral topic words: 3.0 2.82389162562 106% => OK
Total topic words: 14.0 14.657635468 96% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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: This is not the final score. 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.