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 of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores, is determined to increase the profits that the company is generating. He/she intends to do this by lowering operating costs of the stores by reducing the hours that the store remains open in a day. The argument the owner proposes does not have sufficient evidence to back up its effectiveness in achieving his goal.
The memo provides data collected from one of their stores in downtown Marston as evidence supporting their claim that not many customers would complain if the store closed at 6 pm instead of 9 pm. A key assumption that the owner makes in this case when applying data from one store location to all its other locations is that the demographics in all the locations are similar to each other. Suppose Marston consist of a higher percentage of senior citizens who are free to visit the store during the day, but another location has a higher percentage of the working class who cannot make it to the store by 6 pm after a work day. The profit margins calculated with reduced hours for Marston would not hold any validity when applied to the other location. Evidence showing only slight differences in demographics between all 10 locations would strengthen the owner’s argument.
Additionally, movie choices vary depending on the population of the town where the store is located. Movies Galore tried to further reduce expenses by not stocking DVDs that released more than five years ago. In Marston, they found it to be successful in generating more profits. However, the author lacks evidence supporting the claim that this would be successful at other locations as well. At some locations that are in areas with higher percentage of youth that are equipped with services such as Netflix, maybe the only movies they seek at movie stores are those that are old and unavailable on streaming services. In these cases, Movies Galore would be losing out on customers because they did not consider catering the inventory to the population’s demands. Evidence refuting these potential differences in the consumer’s demands at each store location would therefore be valuable and supportive.
Another piece of evidence that is missing is the effectiveness of any other alternatives that the owner might have considered to reduce expenses. Could hiring one less person to man the store or lowering electrical expenses by using more energy-efficient sources or opening late instead of closing early make a difference? An assessment the relative impact of possible alternative to the solution proposed for implementation would go a long way. Once there is evidence suggesting that what the author proposes is the best solution for all locations, he/she would have a stronger claim.
In summary, the author lacks several crucial pieces of evidence when making his/her claim. The solution proposed by the author lacks sufficient conclusive evidence to back up its effectiveness at addressing the aim of lowering operating expenses. The author must consider the suggestions outlined above before making conclusive decisions on the optimal solution for increasing profit margins in the stores.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 516 350
No. of Characters: 2601 1500
No. of Different Words: 246 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.766 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.041 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.765 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 190 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 153 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 113 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.455 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.111 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.273 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.298 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.51 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 408, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (Marston) must be used with a third-person verb: 'consists'.
Suggestion: consists
... similar to each other. Suppose Marston consist of a higher percentage of senior citize...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 116, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[3]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'considered reducing'.
Suggestion: considered reducing
... alternatives that the owner might have considered to reduce expenses. Could hiring one less person ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, well, in summary, 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 : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2669.0 2260.96107784 118% => OK
No of words: 513.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20272904483 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75914943092 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87409036241 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 253.0 204.123752495 124% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.493177387914 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 854.1 705.55239521 121% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.0184397155 57.8364921388 71% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.318181818 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3181818182 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.13636363636 5.70786347227 55% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => 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: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.178501943435 0.218282227539 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0599942436488 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0909111255577 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.109305767227 0.128457276422 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0927539178072 0.0628817314937 148% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.72 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.