The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores.
"In order to stop the recent decline in our profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore's ten movie-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. By implementing similar changes in our other stores, Movies Galore can increase profits without jeopardizing our reputation for offering great movies at low prices."
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.
In the memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, the recommendation is to reduce operating costs at Movie Galore's 10 video rental stores to reverse the recent decline in profits. Evidence of the changes at the downtown Marston store and their positive impact on reducing operational costs has been highlighted. I find the argument as provided weak and find that there are atleast three essential questions that must be answered before it can be evaluated effectively.
The first question is, if it is possible to increase the rental prices in some situations to improve profits and maintain the famous reputation for great bargains? Perhaps, the cost on the latest and most in-demand movies could be increased as people would be more inclined to pay for those. Possibly, increasing costs of individual rentals and offering discounts on combinations could also help achieve the same goal. If either of these could possibly help increase the profit while maintaining the reputation, it would severely weaken the argument that reducing operational overhead is the only way ahead.
The second questions is, if all stores can even implement the kind of changes that were made at the downtown Marston store? Maybe, the store in a different town sees most of its footfall between 6-9 PM and thus closing earlier would actually be more detrimental to their business than just continuing with the current operation costs. It could also be that one of the stores is famous for having an excellent collection of older classics, and if they eliminated this stock to only keep movies that were released less than 5 years ago they end up losing customers and facing even more loss. If either of these points stands true, the argument that making these changes would actually reduce operating expenses would lose a lot of weight.
The third question is, what guarantee is there that this reduction in operational expenses would reverse the recent decline in profits? It could be that the operational expenses are actually a really small fraction of the business expenses of Movies Galore and reducing these has negligible impact on the earnings of the business. Possibly, the decline in profits was too much and even this reduction in operational expenses would not be be enough to be able to reverse its impact. If either of these stand true, it would make the arguments provided for this recommendation lose a lot of water.
To conclude, the recommendation and the arguments provided for it, as they stand are quite flawed. If the answers to the three questions raised could be provided, it would be possible to analyse the recommendation more effectively and decide if it would likely have the predicted result.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 448 350
No. of Characters: 2219 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.601 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.953 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.646 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.353 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.268 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.326 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.058 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 439, Rule ID: MAY_COULD_POSSIBLY[1]
Message: Use simply 'could'.
Suggestion: could
...hieve the same goal. If either of these could possibly help increase the profit while maintain...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 436, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: be
...ction in operational expenses would not be be enough to be able to reverse its impact...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, first, if, may, really, second, so, third, thus, while, as to, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2268.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 448.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.0625 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60065326758 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68501828344 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.479910714286 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 707.4 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.0471279442 57.8364921388 68% => OK
Chars per sentence: 133.411764706 119.503703932 112% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.3529411765 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.05882352941 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.247892675748 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0920424436666 0.0743258471296 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.109954339027 0.0701772020484 157% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.151917030078 0.128457276422 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.102497407897 0.0628817314937 163% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.27 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.