The Excelsior Company plans to introduce its own brand of coffee. Sinc

Hey guys,

I know that reading essays can be sometime really borring. So I'd like to bring my contribution to the forum, in this way newbies like me would be able to improve their AWA.
I'm not saying that this essay is perfect, actually it is not, my english is clearly rusty and arguments are not very convincing. Nevertheless, I bought the offical AWA tool on GMAC website in order to see if I was doing good or wrong. According to the software that evaluated my essay, I would have got a 6. So maybe it will help some people who have troubles with the AWA.



SUBJECT: "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."

ESSAY (about 640 words) :


The argument claims that The Excelsior Company will introduce a new brand of coffee on market. As the coffee market is expensive and very competitive, Excelsior had to adopt a similar marketing strategy like a leading competitor. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention key factors, on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion relies on assumptions, for which there is no clear evidence. Therefore, the argument is rather weak, unconvincing and incomplete.

First, the beginning of the passage assumes that in order to experience a great success with its new brand of coffee. Excelsior has to copy the marketing strategy of an important competitor. This statement is a stretch as it does not provide any information about Excelsior's situation on the coffee market. Moreover, the author does not explain why such strategy would be effective in the case of Excelsior. We can take the example of Apple. a leading smartphone company. If we imagine that Apple was about to create TV set and home cinema -like Samsung or Sony-, nobody could say that Apple would experience success or failure. More precisely, Apple is not known as a TV producer, but as a hardware producer and seller. Therefore, it might be irrelevant for Apple to use the same strategy of leading competitors as Apple does not benefit from the same reputation in this specific area. Actually, it would be better for Apple to develop first its image in the TV set area before copying Sony's or Samsung's strategy. In brief, we can say that the first claim is unconvincing as the author does not provided any piece of background about Excelsior. Therefore, the reader cannot assess if such marketing strategy would be effective in the case of Excelsior Company. The argument would have been clearer if it had stated that such strategy was the fittest in the case of Excelsior.

Second, the argument asserts that the marketing strategy consists in offering free samples, introducing promotions etc. This is again an unsupported claim as it does not demonstrate any correlation between a discount strategy and the success of a new brand. We can consider the example of Nespresso. Nespresso represents a luxuary brand or coffee and is very successful thanks to its free samples. More precisely, when you go to a Nesspresso shop and when you buy Nespresso's coffe, then employees offer you a free cup of coffee. So we can conclude that Nespresso success is based on the good atmosphere created in their shops. Nevertheless, people are able to get free samples only when they buy. On the contrary, it is really hard to say if Nespresso would have been as successful as it is if it has provided free samples for non-buyers people. Therefore, Excelsior's success with promotion cannot be guaranted as the Nespresso's example is exactly the opposite situation. If the argument had provided some statistical data or evidence that the more a company makes promotion the more sales increase, then it would have been much more convincing.

Finally, some additional information would have strengthened the argument. As explained before, providing information about Excelsior's background could have help to understand the company's situation, and so to determine what strategy was the fittest in this situation. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of marketing campaign would have helped the reader to determine whether a promotion strategy is good or not, or if another strategy -such as Nespresso's- is better. Without any answers to these questions, one is left with the impression that the argument is a wishful thinking rather than a substantiated argument. The claim would have been strengthened if it has mentioned one of the relevant facts cited before.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. Actually, in order to assess the merits of a decision, it is essential to have a full knowledge of all contributing factors. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.






SCORE:


Writing Report
GMAT Analysis of an Argument #1 Completed: 2012-08-20
Description
Score
Total Score 6
Analyzes the issue 6
Supports ideas 6
Organizes a coherent idea 6
Language control 6

Bye