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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The author asserts that the Happy Pancake House has to replace butter with margarine to save the cost of its restaurants in the southeast and the northeast region since there were few complaints about the change of butter in the southwestern United States. Even though his opinion seems plausible at first glance, the wrong assumptions lead me to question the validity of this article.
First, according to the author’s memo, there was only 2 percent of complaints among the whole customers when the butter has been replaced by margarine in the restaurant through the southwestern United States. However, this does not mean other 98 percent of customers were satisfied with the change. There could be more customers who were unsatisfied with the change but did not report their complaints. To bolster his assertion, the author needs to provide a more precise and detailed survey that helps to understand the whole customer’s opinion.
Second, the author concluded that the customers could not distinguish between butter and margarine since the customers did not present their complaints to the servers. But this is a too hasty generalization. Despite the customers that served the pancake with margarine perceived the difference in the taste, they did not report their complaints. However, they may decide not to revisit the pancake restaurant since they were not satisfied with the quality of the pancake. If the author gives more convincing evidence that the customers did not know the difference between butter and margarine, this memo would be more persuasive.
In addition, the author assumes that the price of butter is higher than margarine. So he believes that the replacement of butter with margarine will be more profitable to the restaurant. However, he did not present the price of butter and margarine at all in this memorandum. So we cannot analyze the benefit of the change with the information provided by him. To validate his argument, the author has to show the price of butter and margarine in this memo.
Finally, the author believes that the change will be effective in other regions in the United States like the southeast or the northeast area. But a more detailed survey that includes the market trend and the characteristics of customers in those regions is needed to support the author’s assertion. The reaction to the change would be different in the southwestern and other areas. If the customers in those regions have fine-tuned taste about food, they may perceive the changes from butter to margarine.
In conclusion, this memo has many flaws in assumptions and a shortage of appropriate evidence and information to make the optimal decision that affects the restaurant’s sales and profit. Therefore, the author’s argument needs to provide more persuasive data about an additional survey about the customer’s complaints, the price of butter and margarine, and a more detailed analysis of the cost-benefit of the new change.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 479 350
No. of Characters: 2430 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.678 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.073 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.703 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 182 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 135 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 73 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.773 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.971 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.577 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, so, therefore, as to, in addition, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2502.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 479.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22338204593 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67825486995 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83329382955 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.417536534447 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 771.3 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.7633301476 57.8364921388 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.727272727 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7727272727 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.31818181818 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.242794953152 0.218282227539 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0718106686374 0.0743258471296 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0772823755868 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.134903490345 0.128457276422 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0562157354739 0.0628817314937 89% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.01 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.