Review AWA
[#permalink]
14 Feb 2021, 02:50
Hi folks,
I am practising the Chineseburned's AWA format and here is an attempt for the same.
Please review my essay and let me know how you feel about it.
Argument:
The following appeared in an announcement issued by the publisher of The Mercury, a weekly newspaper:
“Since a competing lower-priced newspaper, The Bugle was started five years ago, The Mercury’s circulation has
declined by 10,000 readers. The best way to get more people to read The Mercury is to reduce its price below that of
The Bugle, at least until circulation increases to former levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract
more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
My essay:
The passage presents a case of a weekly newspaper "The Mercury" that observed a decline in sales due to a lower-priced competitor "The Bugle" that came up 5 years ago. While the strategy that the publisher planning to implement is quite convincing as competitive pricing can attract more customer and hence more sales of advertisement space for the newspaper but the following points would add more weight to the argument and supplement a well-researched decision.
Firstly, the argument mentions a decline of 10,000 readers of Mercury but no information about the increase in readers or sales of "The Bugle" is provided. While a cheaper competitor could be a strong reason for the decline in the sales but those readers must have gone somewhere and it cannot be implied from the passage that they went to "The Bugle". There could have been some other publisher who might have had some extra edge over "Mercury" which attracted customer at a similar or higher price. Which scraps the entire idea of reducing the price.
Secondly, The number 10,000 is quite vague since throughout the passage the original number of readers are not mentioned. For example, If there were 1,000,000 readers overall a reduction of 10,000 readers i.e. 1% of the total reader is not very significant and such drastic actions of reducing costs can't be justified and it could be just a seasonal or occasional trend.
While the passage provides a very convincing case of increasing circulation and tries to establish a relationship between reduction in the readers of the newspaper with the introduction of a new cheaper competitor. If the mentioned points are added to the passage, it would support a better decision making overall.
close
