The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. 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 cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well."
Grounding on the report of few complaints from the customers and synthesizing the hypotheses that customers either being unaware or do not care what they actually received, the author accordingly suggests that copying the strategy of replacing butter by margarine over other places will bring the company more profit. However, to assess the efficacy of the claim, several questions want answers.
To begin with, 2 percent of customers complained do not entirely translate into 98 percent of satisfaction. Although it may be true, the author should consider the possibility that the customers just do not want to waste any time on complaining with the company. They simply walk away as soon as they feel disappointed with the products. In addition, questions are raised of how the poll was conducted and who responded to the survey. Is the report representative of the general customers? Is the result reliable? We need hard numbers and rigorous statistics to strengthen the assumption.
Furthermore, the author assumes that the customers either do not have the intellect to distinguish the differences or they accept both products for their similarity. It is a bold and reckless assumption basing on the judgement of customers' wisdom. What if most of the customers are specialize in bakery and they choose Happy Pancake House restaurants because they believe in their qualities? If this scenario is true, it will not only cause a great loss but a long-term negative impression among bakers. In fact, the author has overlooks the ramification of being a dishonest seller.
What's more, given that this approach is feasible in one place, it does not mean that it is acceptable in other places as well. A question related to this is whether margarine is likely to continue to be cheaper than butter in the foreseeable future. Local tastes may vary and customer’s responses to the substitution may not be the same as well. More information about residents in the Southeast and the Northeast is required to answer the above questions.
In conclusion, several questions needed to be answered in order to make the argument more convincing. Otherwise, it will turn out to be a terrible marketing plan for Happy Pancake House restaurants and is likely lead to business failure as customer’s confidence is of vital importance when running a company.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 382 350
No. of Characters: 1921 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.421 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.029 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.849 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.1 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.622 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.257 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.488 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.038 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 283, Rule ID: BEEN_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Consider using a past participle here: 'specialized'.
Suggestion: specialized
...sdom. What if most of the customers are specialize in bakery and they choose Happy Pancake...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: What's
...ication of being a dishonest seller. Whats more, given that this approach is feasi...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, actually, but, furthermore, however, if, look, may, so, then, well, in addition, in conclusion, in fact, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1975.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 382.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.17015706806 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42095241839 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94416508645 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 214.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.560209424084 0.468620217663 120% => OK
syllable_count: 612.0 705.55239521 87% => 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: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 61.1714598485 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.75 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.55 5.70786347227 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.195794405558 0.218282227539 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.045770033389 0.0743258471296 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0639626078678 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.1034761099 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0476947838399 0.0628817314937 76% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.5 14.3799401198 87% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.96 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.