Please evaluate my AWA Essay attempt!
[#permalink]
01 Jan 2019, 12:02
Hi all,
Thank you in advance for anyone who takes the time to review and assess this piece!
This is the question I responded to:
TOPIC
The following appeared as part of an annual report sent to stockholders by Olympic Foods, a processor of frozen foods:
"Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, they become more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print fell from 50 cents for five-day service in 1970 to 20 cents for one-day service in 1984. The same principle applies to the processing of food. And since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its 25th birthday, we can expect that our long experience will enable us to minimize costs and thus maximize profits."
Discuss how well reasoned...
ANSWER
The argument appearing in the annual report sent to stockholders by Olympic foods is lacking the sufficient evidence to justify it’s claims. It ignores the fact that food processing and film processing are not comparable in this scenario. Also, costs do not always go down when organizations become more efficient. Lastly, things change as time progresses and the argument ignores that phenomenon.
A major flaw this argument makes is that it makes the comparison of color film processing to food processing. While film processing and food processing both refine their respective subjects, the costs associated with each process are independent of each other. Meaning, that because the costs of processing prints in 1970 were less than they were in 1984 does not ring true for the costs of processing food. These industries operate separately from each other and the argument insinuates they are connected which is a flawed assumption. Another flaw made by this argument is that conditions remain static. The highlighted change in costs associated with processing film in 1970 to 1984 does not mean that the same changes will or have occurred in the period of 1984 to the present day. This argument ignores the dynamic conditions in which organizations operate in, and to it’s detriment, the world has changed in the years since 1984 and those changes must be taken into consideration for investors. A third flaw of the argument is made when discussing Olympic foods’ 25th birthday, and that their experience will lead to minimizing costs and maximizing profits. While it is notable that they have been operating for such a long time, talking about their longevity does nothing to demonstrate that profits will increase in the future. A way that discussing their longevity would demonstrate to investors that profits would increase would be to mention that they have devoted customers who continue to shop at their store after 25 years and these customers are subscribers to a loyalty group that receives special benefits. That would display that consumers appreciate their business, have done so for a while and it can be assumed they will return to the store and spend money.
The argument ignores important information causing it to not be sound or persuasive. If those pieces of information highlighted above were to be considered, the argument would be more convincing to their target audience.