First try: please comment on my writing!

Greetings everyone. I have read thru a few posts on AWA and want to give a shot myself. Unfortunately I don't have any GMAT study mate in real life to give me comments so I decided to post here. Please take a look if you have time and make a few comments. What score do you think it is, and how can I improve further? Anything would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks,
Y

"The Excelsior Company plans to introduce its own brand of coffee. Since coffee is an expensive food item, and since there are already many established brands of coffee, the best way to gain customers for the Excelsior brand is to do what Superior, the leading coffee company, did when it introduced the newest brand in its line of coffees: conduct a temporary sales promotion that offers free samples, price reductions, and discount coupons for the new brand."

The argument states that in order for the excelsior company to launch its own coffee brand in this already highly competitive market is to copy what Superior, one of the most popular brands in the market, once did (i.e. conduct a sale promotion by offering free samples, give a discount of their product as well as give away discount coupons). The author proposes that by doing so their will achieve business success in launching their new coffee brand; however, this is purely based on what The Superior did in the past, rather than marketing research and more practical measures. Therefore, this argument is weak and has several issues illustrated below.

Firstly, the argument readily assumes that the best way to win the market share for the new brand Excelsior is to copy Superior’s strategies when they launched their brand. This statement is a stretch because there is no evidence suggesting that this is the best way to promote their sales; there might be other ways to promote a new brand that maybe better, for example, by collaborating with an already well-established brand and utilize their market share. This argument could have been much clearer if the author states that he/she has carefully evaluated various branding strategies and provide valid reasons that copying Superior’s strategies is the best.

Secondly, the author did not provide any evidence that “conduct a temporary sales promotion, offering free samples, reducing prices and giving discount coupons” is the best ways for branding. As we has discussed earlier, the author believes that these are the best ways to promote their brand as Superior once did the same thing; however, the author failed to compare the two brands – are their product equivalent in terms of quality? Was the market situation when Superior started their brand the same as now? Did Superior have as many as competitors as Excelsior has now? One could not be convinced that using the same strategy as Superior would achieve equivalent success as the author did not dive into explaining any of the doubts. The argument could have been more convincing if the author has given more details about their own brand in terms of product, target costumer group, distribution channel and number of competitors, while making comparisons with Superior.

Finally, the author failed to show considerations about other competitors when he/she claimed that these strategies are the best. For example, if every other company is using the same marketing technique after Superior has achieved success utilizing them, one would not have any advantage by simply adopting these techniques. In order to make a new brand to be noticed by costumers, one need to think about how to stand out among other already established brands, rather than hoping to relive the success story of other brand. The argument would look more convincing if the author shows that he/she has considered other techniques and their results.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above reasons. It would be strengthened if the author has mentioned the above relevant facts and give a more carefully thought process.