The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
In this memo, the manager argues that butter replacement with margarine could lead to little impact on their customers. To support his/her claim, the author quotes both the little customer complaints and the servers' feedback about customers' attitude to such change. Quite convincing though such explanation appears, we can not safely argue that it is the unique explanation that could account for the facts presented by the author. Therefore, we need to plumb other explanations, which could rival with the one proposed in the passage.
To start off, the author ascribes the satisfaction out of majority of customers to the fact that only 2 percentage of customers complaint. While it is possible that rare complains signifies a positive customer feedback, others factors could result in such phenomenon as well. First of all, it is likely that the survey used for complaint collecting is designed to fit for just a group of people who are inclined to have little complaints. Furthermore, as the feedback result would be linked with designer's annual performance, they actually choose a pre-analyzed respondents during the procedure of survey. If either of aforementioned cases stay true, it is reasonable to assume that such 2 percentage complaints isn't a impartial reflection for the real customer status, thus it could weaken the author's explanation.
Moreover, the author presents two explanations for the facts that servers reported to customers' attitude for such changes. However, customers' attitude could spring not only from those two reasons, but also other probabilities. For example, customers might easily distinguish butter from provided margarine, however, when taking margarine for a trial, they actually find margarine have better taste than they expected. If it is the case, the surprise brought back by good tastes definitely lead to no negative feedback. Furthermore, while some customer asked servers for butter instead of margarine, they are so busy and little time for their dinner that they would like to accept such alternative instead of spending time on complaints, which merely increase their time cost. Without further investigation, we don't which explanation could lead to such situation mentioned above. And it's even likely that all of them conspire to customers' positive attitude to such replacement.
Last but not least, while little complaints and conspicuous customer attitudes might lend support to the conclusion of trivial business impact, it is reckless for us to claim that it is the unique reason for such conclusion. Other factors might contribute to such outgrowth as well. Taking margarine's storage as example, after using margarine to replace with butter, the company might save quite a lot of money for storage of their raw material, as the result of less rigorous reserved condition for margarine. Consequently, such cost decline brings about diminishing of service fee and restaurants prices, which are afforded largely by customers. Thus, with the same money as before, customers could enjoy much better services for food and housing, which contributes to little impact on company business.
In summary, while the rare business impact could be extrapolated from rare customer complaints and their feedback attitude, we still can no establish the well casual relationship between it and the ultimate business impact conclusion. This margarine surrogate with butter is such an phenomenon that we need more considerations for alternative explanations that account for the facts presented in the passage.
In this memo, we are informed that butter replacement with margarine had little impact on their customers. To support his/her claim, the author quotes that only 2 percent of customers have complained for such change. Furthermore, he/she also cites servers' feedback to reason out that customers could not distinguish butter from margarine. Quite convincing though such explanation appears, it is too hasty to claim that it is the only reason the accounts for the facts presented by the author. Therefore, we need to consider more explanations, which could rival with the one proposed in the argument.
To start off, the author ascribes the only 2 percent customers' complaints to the fact that an average of 98 people out of 100 are satisfactory with such change. While few complaints seems a good sign for customers' contentment, such phenomenon could spring from other reasons as well. First of all, it is likely that customers who are given margarine with butter are so disappointed that they even do not trust the company via raising up their bad temper. If this is the case, only 2 percent of complaints do not stand for that such change is a good direction to match with customers' requirement. Consequently, the seeming few complaints could be explained as stemming from that fact that majority of customers are totally hurt by such sudden change and forgo the following complaints. Second, even if there exactly exists only few complaints, it could not be exclusively attributed to the reason that customers are satisfied with such change. It is of equal probability that customers might think such change is so trivial that they do not care about such change, thus just make complaints by chance. Once the assertion customer's indifference attitude is true that proves unwarranted, the underlying logic could be weakened, namely: 2 percent of customer complaints could reflect how people feel about such change.
Furthermore, the reason that customer's disability for distinguishing butter from margarine seems to lend great support to the assumption that customers seldom complain when asking butter but giving margarine. However, such situtation could be explained not only their disability of distinguishing providings, but also their status quo when giving margarine. For example, They might have a very short time to have dinner and butter just serves as the inconsequential source for their dinner. In this case, they don not sufficient reason to complain and insist to ask for butter, considering the time cost. Furthermore, perhaps after giving the margarine, the nice tastes of margarine change their initial idea and they also abandon their initial idea. Without further investigation, we can not decide which explanation could lead to customers' silence when giving the alternative. It is likely that all of the aforementioned assumptions could conspire to such situation.
Last but not least, while all of aforementioned assumption are valid, we can not safely claim that the one the author mentioned is unique explanation. Other explanations could also compete with the alleged one in the argument. The price advantage brought about by the replacement, the delicious taste involved with margarine could also contribute to the customer's final satisfaction and lead to little impact on customers.
In summary, while exert great influence on , in the absence of sufficient information, we can not establish the well causal relationship between it and . is such a case that we need more alternative explanations that could account for the facts mentioned in the argument.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2019-09-20 | Krishna Prasad | 46 | view |
| 2019-09-10 | orlando23 | 59 | view |
| 2019-07-30 | Amin Beheshti | 72 | view |
| 2019-03-09 | adhgna@gmail.com | 77 | view |
| 2018-11-24 | julls.kl | 72 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-memorand…
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-essays/following-memorandum-business-ma…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 573 350
No. of Characters: 2950 1500
No. of Different Words: 248 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.893 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.148 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.829 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 207 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 96 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.839 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.318 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.504 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.126 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 227, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...s a good sign for customers contentment, such phenomenon could spring from other ...
^^
Line 9, column 30, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'customers'' or 'customer's'?
Suggestion: customers'; customer's
...nge. Furthermore, the reason that customers disability for distinguishing butter fr...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 898, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...ving the alternative. It is likely that all of the aforementioned assumptions could conspi...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 281, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...antage brought about by the replacement, the delicious taste involved with margar...
^^
Line 17, column 43, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
... summary, while exert great influence on , in the absence of sufficient informatio...
^^
Line 17, column 152, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
... well causal relationship between it and . is such a case that we need more alter...
^^
Line 17, column 156, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Is
...l causal relationship between it and . is such a case that we need more alternati...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, first, furthermore, however, if, second, so, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, in summary, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 26.0 13.6137724551 191% => OK
Pronoun: 52.0 28.8173652695 180% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3033.0 2260.96107784 134% => OK
No of words: 571.0 441.139720559 129% => OK
Chars per words: 5.31173380035 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.88831323574 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92676869301 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 257.0 204.123752495 126% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.450087565674 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 918.9 705.55239521 130% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 13.0 4.96107784431 262% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 34.5904958045 57.8364921388 60% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 121.32 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.84 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.48 5.70786347227 96% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.0688322989458 0.218282227539 32% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0253214418876 0.0743258471296 34% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0301538317936 0.0701772020484 43% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0401954896986 0.128457276422 31% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.031667346154 0.0628817314937 50% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.81 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.13 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.