The following appeared in a memo from the marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores.
"Five years ago Fish Emporium started advertising in the magazine Exotic Pets Monthly. Their stores saw sales increase by 15 percent after their ads began appearing in the magazine. The three Fish Emporium stores in Gulf City saw an even greater increase than that. Because Top Dog Pet Stores is based in Gulf City, it seems clear that we should start placing our own ads in Exotic Pets Monthly. If we do so, we will be sure to reverse the recent trend of declining sales and start making a profit again."
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.
Marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores presumes that placing ads in Exotics Pets Monthly magazine will reverse the declining sales and lead to making profits. He or she gives example of Fish Emporium which started the ads on the magazine and went through 15 percent sales increase, and especially, even more for three stores in Gulf City. Because Fish Emporium store is based on Gulf City, he or she thinks that Dog Pet Store should place ads as well. However, there are a few evidence and supplemental background research required to justify these thoughts(memo).
The director simply puts to become “Dog Pet Store” users on the same shoes with “Fish Emporium” customers. Perhaps people who breeds fish can be an enthusiastic reader of the magazine, Exotic Pets Monthly, but question remains if that dog breeders likes to read the magazine as well. Somehow if residents of Gulf City are more keen to raising fish rather than dogs, then placing ads on the magazine would not be beneficial.
Secondly, the director assumes that magazine ads was substantial reason for sales increase, but this may not stand true. Five years ago, Fish Emporium might have placed ads in many other medium as well, such as TV commercials. People of Gulf city could be more of a TV watching person which in turn, led to seeing the Fish emporium ads subsequently bolstering its sales. Especially, because this was 5 years ago, the efficient medium to put the ad on might be different nowadays. If the effective commercial channel changed, putting ads on magazine might not help increasing sales.
Lastly, altering the trend of declining sales does not guarantee making profit again as the author suggests. Even if the abovementioned obstacles are removed and magazine was efficient, increasing sales and raising profits is a different matter. Placing ads on the Exotic Pets Monthly might cost legs and arms. In such cases, because of the skyrocketed spending on placing ads, even the sales increase, the profit might be worsened in total.
If these assumptions are not warranted by sturdy background research and proof, there is no guarantee of reversing declining sales and making profit again for Dog Pet Stores. If the magazine is substantially proven to be effective and its dog pet stores customers are its readers as well, then the argument might stand well.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 391 350
No. of Characters: 1903 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.447 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.867 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.529 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.722 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.404 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.352 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.569 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.099 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 476, Rule ID: MANY_NN_U[6]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun evidence seems to be uncountable; consider using: 'little evidence'.
Suggestion: little evidence
...place ads as well. However, there are a few evidence and supplemental background research re...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 565, Rule ID: ADVISE_VBG[5]
Message: The verb 'help' is used with infinitive: 'to increase' or 'increase'.
Suggestion: to increase; increase
... putting ads on magazine might not help increasing sales. Lastly, altering the trend of ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 305, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... Exotic Pets Monthly might cost legs and arms. In such cases, because of the skyr...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, well, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 34.0 55.5748502994 61% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 16.3942115768 18% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1969.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 391.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.0358056266 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44676510885 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62098554315 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 196.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.501278772379 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 597.6 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 29.5637519963 57.8364921388 51% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 109.388888889 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7222222222 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.325141547541 0.218282227539 149% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.111234787975 0.0743258471296 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0819167750052 0.0701772020484 117% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.188012584789 0.128457276422 146% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0841250789684 0.0628817314937 134% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.95 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.6 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.