"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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."
The business manager argues that HPH restaurants in southeast and northeast should follow the practice of replacing butter with margarine as customers in southwest seemed to be happy with the arrangement which can save costs for the company. We need to ask a number of questions about how the replacement affected the food at HPH, how the customers felt about the replacement and what difference there might be between southwest customers and the customers in the other regions in order to evaluate the soundness of the argument.
To begin with, we need to know what percentages of the food and the customers have been affected by the replacement to better understand what it means to have 2% of customers complaining. If, for example, only half of the food items on the menu were prepared with butter (or margarine after replacement) or about 30% of customers actually ordered anything with butter replaced by margarine, the fact that 2% of customers complained would be far more significant than the number suggested. In other words, the customers who ordered pancake without butter to begin with or the food items that do not include butter should be excluded from the data if we want any meaningful information.
In addition, we need to know the real attitudes of customers towards the replacement of butter with margarine. The fact that most customers being given margarine did not complain does not mean that these customers were completely satisfied with the new arrangement. Complaining about the food in a restaurant can be a stressful experience for many customers who do not want to ruin the time they spent with their friends or family members. They may choose to vote against the restaurant by feet by not coming to the restaurant next time instead of making a complaint right away. Therefore, we need to investigate how customers felt about the change through other means such as focus group, interviewing or simply monitoring the number of returning customers.
Moreover, it is not safe to assume that what works in one region would necessarily do the trick in a different region. Therefore, we need to ask if the customers in the other regions have the same preferences when it comes to butter vs. margarine. We need to carefully compare the demographic information of the different regions and investigate how different ages, income, gender and educational levels may affect customers’ preferences for butter in a pancake restaurant. Such information is vital for the company to make decisions about adopting this new policy in other areas.
Finally, it is important to ask whether it is ethical to keep the customers in the dark with regard to the use of butter versus margarine. The company needs to know what the customers really want when they use the term “butter” rather than simply assuming that butter can mean both real butter and the cheaper substitute. Offering the customers something cheaper than what the customers expect and taking advantages of the ambiguity in the naming of food may be unethical practices that would harm the restaurant’s reputation and long-term profitability and may even carry legal consequences.
Overall speaking, it is understandable that the company looks for ways to save costs and increase profits and replacing butter with something cheaper seems to be smart move. But this arrangement should not be extended to more restaurants in other regions unless the questions raised above are answered and the information collected clearly suggests that this arrangement is a desirable move.
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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: 19 15
No. of Words: 581 350
No. of Characters: 2917 1500
No. of Different Words: 252 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.91 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.021 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.786 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 206 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 159 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 126 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 104 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.579 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.616 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.684 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.365 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.607 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.179 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 346, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'customers'' or 'customer's'?
Suggestion: customers'; customer's
...nd the cheaper substitute. Offering the customers something cheaper than what the custome...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, if, look, may, moreover, really, so, therefore, for example, in addition, such as, in other words, to begin with, with regard to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 86.0 55.5748502994 155% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2997.0 2260.96107784 133% => OK
No of words: 581.0 441.139720559 132% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15834767642 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90957651803 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93974996673 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 258.0 204.123752495 126% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.444061962134 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 926.1 705.55239521 131% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 58.1667771259 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 157.736842105 119.503703932 132% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.5789473684 23.324526521 131% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.0 5.70786347227 140% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.201914985231 0.218282227539 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0745453980984 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0364121724488 0.0701772020484 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.119047674785 0.128457276422 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0438630906473 0.0628817314937 70% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.2 14.3799401198 127% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.03 48.3550499002 85% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.24 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.25 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 115.0 98.500998004 117% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 18.0 11.9071856287 151% => 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.