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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 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."
The presented memorandum recommends that Happy Pancake House will benefit from replacing butter with margarine in order to increase profitability while scaling up this strategy to its northeast region. Although the manager should be commended for his or her effort to maximize profits, this argument should be viewed with caution as it rests upon a few unwarranted assumptions. If the manager reviews and adjusts the argument in consideration of the three points illustrated below, the restaurant chain will more likely be able to ensure its success.
First, the manager assumes that the fact that only two percent of customers have complained suggests that the majority of them are happy with the change from butter to margarine. One could argue that the lack of complaints does not necessarily mean that the customers are “happy” with the change. For instance, it is possible that they in fact did not appreciate it and never returned to the restaurant without submitting a complaint. Alternatively, they were perhaps simply neutral about the change, leaving the possibility that only a self-selected group of customers submitted complaints. Had the manager presented data to demonstrate a high satisfaction rate among a representative sample group instead of the small percentage of customers who have complained, the claim could be much more persuasive. One way to do this is, for instance, to administer a customer survey directly asking if they are happy with this change to a sample group that is statistically representative of the southeast region.
Another point that requires a careful analysis is the assertion that the customers either are unable to discern butter from margarine or use the terms “butter” and “margarine” interchangeably. The manager makes this speculative argument solely based on the self-reported data by employees, which should be viewed with a grain of salt for three reasons. First, from the report on “a number of “ customers alone, we do know the specific numbers. Perhaps they only account for one percent of the customer base. Second, the self-reported data can be easily either over- or under-reported. Additionally, without specific evidence demonstrating that they cannot in fact distinguish the two ingredients or use them interchangeably, this link from the self-reported data cannot be well-supported. One solution that the manager should consider is to collect data directly from the customers to confirm these two possibilities in a statistically valid way.
The last flaw of this business strategy is that, building on the arguments above, the manager goes as far to recommend that the restaurant chain should apply the change to the northeast area. The manager clearly assumes that the same strategy whose efficacy is already questionable will work in a different area without evidence. This can be an extremely dangerous move as we do not know whether or not these two areas are similar in characteristics such as preferences in taste. For instance, customers in the northeast area may have a strong preference for butter as a significant part of their traditional cuisine and consume a much larger amount of butter a year. Without ascertaining the fact that the customer base in the northeast is as likely to accept margarine as that of the southeast, the recommendation remains unconvincing and the company could potentially end up losing the existing customer base. It is advisable, then, to conduct market research to ensure that the target demographics in the northeast are comparable to the ones in the southeast region.
To sum, while the business strategy to shift to margarine is not entirely invalid, it is strongly recommended that the manager conduct more rigorous market research to address the flaws illustrated above. As suggested, customer surveys to identify that 1) the customers are in fact “happy” with the change, that 2) they are either unable to discern margarine from butter or use these two terms interchangeably, and that 3) the demographics in the northeast are comparable to those of the southeast will be instrumental in accurately determining the validity of the proposal.
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 389, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...remely dangerous move as we do not know whether or not these two areas are similar in characte...
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Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'first', 'if', 'may', 'second', 'so', 'then', 'well', 'while', 'for instance', 'in fact', 'such as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.234185733513 0.25644967241 91% => OK
Verbs: 0.14401076716 0.15541462614 93% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0753701211306 0.0836205057962 90% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0605652759085 0.0520304965353 116% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0269179004038 0.0272364105082 99% => OK
Prepositions: 0.131897711978 0.125424944231 105% => OK
Participles: 0.0296096904441 0.0416121511921 71% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.26209744546 2.79052419416 117% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0349932705249 0.026700313972 131% => OK
Particles: 0.00269179004038 0.001811407834 149% => OK
Determiners: 0.129205921938 0.113004496875 114% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0228802153432 0.0255425247493 90% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00672947510094 0.0127820249294 53% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 4208.0 2731.13054187 154% => OK
No of words: 662.0 446.07635468 148% => OK
Chars per words: 6.35649546828 6.12365571057 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.07241172033 4.57801047555 111% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.400302114804 0.378187486979 106% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.318731117825 0.287650121315 111% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.235649546828 0.208842608468 113% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.167673716012 0.135150697306 124% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.26209744546 2.79052419416 117% => OK
Unique words: 292.0 207.018472906 141% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.441087613293 0.469332199767 94% => OK
Word variations: 54.7263125702 52.1807786196 105% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.039408867 120% => OK
Sentence length: 27.5833333333 23.2022227129 119% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.9800748166 57.7814097925 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 175.333333333 141.986410481 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.5833333333 23.2022227129 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.5 0.724660767414 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 59.4564451158 51.9672348444 114% => OK
Elegance: 1.70930232558 1.8405768891 93% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.383111392966 0.441005458295 87% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.130556560382 0.135418324435 96% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.089693037616 0.0829849096947 108% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.571975088364 0.58762219726 97% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.144891364751 0.147661913831 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.171375132015 0.193483328276 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0727957761282 0.0970749176394 75% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.551153485281 0.42659136922 129% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.108590746554 0.0774707102158 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.284797340401 0.312017818177 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0239602344955 0.0698173142475 34% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.33743842365 156% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.87684729064 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.82512315271 83% => OK
Positive topic words: 10.0 6.46551724138 155% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 20.0 14.657635468 136% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.