“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.
The owner of the memorandum of Movies Galore claimed that reducing operating expenses will likely to compensate their low profits and will not hamper their reputation of offering great movies at a little price. However, the argument is based on a plethora of unwarranted assumptions and has raised several unanswered questions. To support their conclusion, the owner has suggested that they will reduce the shop opening time and also reduce their stock of older movies to decrease operating costs. However, the arguments are logically unconvincing and provided little support towards author’s conclusions.
First of all, the argument assumes that closing the shop at similar times in downtown Marston will significantly reduce their operating expenses, which have absolutely no correlation with reducing their expenses. Let’s assume the downtown area is a little rural or countryside area and the people might be not used to watch movies at night, and similarly, the people at other rental stores might be situated in a core township area, where customers enjoy having movies at night time. Closing shops at 6 PM instead of 9 will have a significant risk of losing its valuable set of customers, which, in turn, will be detrimental to the shop’s plan to rejuvenate their revenue.
Again, the author has claimed that eliminating old stock of movies will reduce the operating expenses, therefore, help them restore their profits. This argument raises many sceptical questions and hasn’t answered them properly. For example, what will happen to the set of customers, who only have a taste for old movies? Losing customers isn’t the way to reverse their trend to cut loose and increase profit. The author should have done surveys to ensure that they will not lose any customer if they cut loose of the stock of old movies.
Finally, the author stated that their reputation is based on selling great movies at a much cheaper rate and in order to increase profit, they are proposing ways to reduce operating costs. But, it might be the case that the people of the city might not be offended by increasing the price of the movies. The company might make a survey to see up to which the customers are likely to spend for the movies, and upon consideration and looking into the other rival store’s rate, they might actually increase the rate of movies, which might be a great way to increase revenue.
To sum it up, the author doesn’t want to damage their reputation, which is solely based on selling great movies at a cheap rate, but want to reduce the cost of operating stores by reducing the shop opening time and by losing the old movie's stock. To support their conclusion, the article has made several unwanted assumptions and raised several questions. Finally, to make the argument sound better, the company should address the rate of the movies by doing surveys and comparing rates of other rival stores, also they should perform in-depth survey to address if their decision regarding reducing operating expenses will provide them necessary benefits or not.
- Summarize the points made in the lecture you just heard, explaining how they cast doubt on points made in the reading. 3
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- The following argument was made in a newspaper editorial:“The autonomy of any country is based on the strength of its borders; if the number of illegal immigrants entering a country cannot be checked, both its economy and national identity are endangere 73
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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need more content to argue against the conclusion:
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.
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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: 18 15
No. of Words: 511 350
No. of Characters: 2495 1500
No. of Different Words: 217 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.755 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.883 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.465 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.389 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.338 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.554 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, however, if, look, regarding, similarly, so, therefore, for example, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2597.0 2260.96107784 115% => OK
No of words: 508.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.11220472441 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74751043592 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6270870614 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.450787401575 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 810.0 705.55239521 115% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 68.9977857938 57.8364921388 119% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.277777778 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.2222222222 23.324526521 121% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.55555555556 5.70786347227 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.163602253729 0.218282227539 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0606044361689 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0329262723174 0.0701772020484 47% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.102144176688 0.128457276422 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0149047202523 0.0628817314937 24% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.