The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of video rental stores.
“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 addressed in order to decide whether implementing the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result and explain how the answers to those questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
One question which needs to be addressed before implementing the recommendation is whether there are not other ways to improve profits besides cutting operating expenses. Without proof, the author decides, first, that there are only two viable options for increasing the profits of Movies Galore: raising rental prices, and cutting costs. He rules out the first course, and hence claims the second option must be chosen. But it seems there may be alternative methods of increasing profits, such as initiating advertising campaigns or closing unprofitable Movies Galore locations.
Even if it is granted that there are only two options for increasing profitability —cutting costs, and raising rental prices — one might wonder why raising rental prices is so unthinkable. The author implies that because Movies Galore is famous for special bargains, raising the rental prices would eliminate this competitive advantage and decrease profitability. However, in making this conclusion, he makes several assumptions without considering questions that need to be addressed. First, he assumes that there is no room to raise current prices and yet maintain lower prices than competitors. One would need to ask if prices could be increased slightly, while keeping them cheap. Even if there is no room for such a strategy, the author assumes that Movies Galore’s reputation for bargain pricing would evaporate if they increased their prices slightly. Perhaps such a reputation would be widespread enough to persist despite a slight increase in prices. And thirdly, even if the reputation for bargains would be eliminated by an increase in prices, the author assumes that Movies Galore cannot change course and be successful in some other way. Perhaps it could instead become known as the store with the friendliest employees. Perhaps it already is, and the author is wrong to believe that a causal relationship between bargain prices and success exists, when the real cause of Movies Galore’s good reputation is entirely independent of its prices. The author needs to answer these questions to convince us that profits are caused by bargains, and not by the other factors that may be involved.
Another question that needs to be raised is whether or not the downtown Marston store is truly analogous to the other nine Movies Galore stores. The author seems to assume that because the cost-cutting measures worked at the Marston location, it will work at the others, but this is far from clear. Perhaps the patrons of the other Movies Galore locations would resent such changes in the hours and stock of their local stores.
Perhaps the most important question that needs to be asked is whether the Marston location’s changes truly increased profitability. The author writes that the Marston store decreased operating expenses by closing earlier and cutting its stock, but he makes no mention of increased profitability. It is quite possible that the Marston location’s profits decreased as a result of their cost cutting, and this is a question that needs to be addressed. The author then jumps to the conclusion that taking similar measures would increase profitability at other locations, though such a connection has not even been established at the Marston store.
Even if the cost-cutting measures increased profitability at the Marston store last month (and a causal relationship, though presumably assumed, is still far from evident), there is no guarantee that such measures would continue to increase profitability over time. One would need to ask: Why not observe how the Marston location’s action affect profitability over several months, before implementing such sweeping changes at every store? A single month is a very short time span, and the habits of customers may change slowly. As word gets around that the Marston store has cut their hours and their selection, they may in fact jeopardize their reputation for offering “great movies at low prices.” After all, the name of the franchise is Movies Galore, and by drastically reducing the available selection, they may alienate their customer base. If, as mentioned above, Movies Galore is famous for more than its great bargains — if customers prefer Movies Galore because of its selections, as well —then such a move may drastically reduce profits over time. It seems extremely rash to implement such a new and relatively untried strategy at every Movies Galore location,before the effects can be fully observed and interpreted.
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Comments
e-rater score report
The first argument and conclusion are too long.
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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: 29 15
No. of Words: 715 350
No. of Characters: 3692 1500
No. of Different Words: 295 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.171 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.164 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.651 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 301 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 206 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 125 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 85 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.655 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.434 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.69 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.304 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.48 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.141 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 314, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'miss evaluating'.
Suggestion: miss evaluating
... of findings and facts, that one cannot miss to evaluate while considering those ideas to be wid...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 367, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...eir customers are employees and students , who visit the shop post their work hour...
^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...ed by the store in downtown Marston. Hence the argument mentioned in the passage h...
^^^^^
Line 9, column 271, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ifications that each store might have to face individually has to be deeply thoug...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, hence, if, may, so, then, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => 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: 1842.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 388.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.74742268041 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43821085614 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6523484288 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.533505154639 0.468620217663 114% => OK
syllable_count: 579.6 705.55239521 82% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 68.2294820603 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.8 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.8666666667 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => 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: 0.200390400418 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0664787701651 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.055538557208 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106341010245 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0637965040099 0.0628817314937 101% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.57 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.46 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.