The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores.
"Because of declining profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore's ten movie-rental stores. Raising prices is not a good option, since we are famous for our low prices. Instead, we should reduce our operating hours. Last month our store in downtown Marston reduced its hours by closing at 6:00 p.m. rather than 9:00 p.m. and reduced its overall inventory by no longer stocking any DVD released more than five years ago. Since we have received very few customer complaints about these new policies, we should now adopt them at all other Movies Galore stores as our best strategies for improving profits."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The owner describes a policy to ensure a reduction in the expenses at the movie rental stores. This policy involves cutting down operating hours and removing stocks of movies older than 5 years. While the policy does seem sound, there are several factors that need to be considered before it should be adopted. These factors must prove to be coherent with the results that the company wants to achieve.
The policy states reducing operational hours, which might reduce the operational cost, we must consider whether it would also impact the sales due to the time cut. After all, reducing 3 operational hours means there would be no sales in these hours, so this has a direct impact on the revenue and profit made by the company. For example - If a store in an area is in the vicinity of a huge corporate complex and these people often visit the store after their work hours which is close to 7 pm, closing the store at 6 pm would impact the sales with the risk of losing valuable customers who might just go to another store. So, the cut down of time is a good policy to cut down operational costs but it should be implemented based on additional factors of which the one discussed above is an important one.
If there is a cut down on stocks movies that were released more than five years ago, this too would reduce maintenance and operational costs. Still, the company needs to evaluate and analyze the revenue generated by sales of the movies released more than 5 years ago. Do these movies still produce a significant profit; this is a question that needs consideration. Just because the movies were released 5 years ago does not necessarily mean their sales must be dormant. The argument also states that because the complaints were made by very few customers, the policies can be adopted. The argument never states what these complaints were and just concludes based on a modicum of customers having complaints. These few customers mentioned may be the clients who do the maximum number of purchases, from whom the maximum amount of profit is earned. If this simple fact is overlooked the sales might go down affecting the overall goal of the policy.
The owner further states that raising prices is not an option, but what if their competitors have raised the prices because they too were facing declining profits. If a majority of the movie renting companies have increased their prices, even after raising their own prices by a bit Movie Galor might keep the reputation of having low prices. The argument also assumes that these policies can be ubiquitous throughout their stores, but stores in different areas have different operational parameters which must be considered, and policies should be mended according to them. While the policies mentioned would reduce expenditure, whether it would affect the overall profit and thus overall revenue, needs to be examined.
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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: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 492 350
No. of Characters: 2344 1500
No. of Different Words: 217 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.71 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.764 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.436 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.6 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.635 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.495 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.12 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 199, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'hours'' or 'hour's'?
Suggestion: hours'; hour's
... cut. After all, reducing 3 operational hours means there would be no sales in these ...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 849, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...the maximum amount of profit is earned. If this simple fact is overlooked the sale...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, if, look, may, so, still, thus, while, after all, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 21.0 12.9520958084 162% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2395.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 492.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.86788617886 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70967865282 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.49395254561 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 230.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.467479674797 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 763.2 705.55239521 108% => 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: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => 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: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.0585657006 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.75 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.6 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.6 5.70786347227 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.241677002648 0.218282227539 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0775917074098 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0657807436299 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.148836749581 0.128457276422 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0255426457835 0.0628817314937 41% => 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: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.0 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.