AWA Review

Question

Hi,

Can anyone review my AWA.

The following appeared as part of a promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette to grocery stores in the Marston area:
“Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. Consider the results of a study conducted last month. Thirty sale items from a store in downtown Marston were advertised in The Gazette for four days. Each time one or more of the 30 items was purchased, clerks asked whether the shopper had read the ad. Two-thirds of the 200 shoppers asked answered in the affirmative. Furthermore, more than half the customers who answered in the affirmative spent over $100 at the store.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

As part of promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette, argument opines that advertising the reduced price of selected products in the Daily Gazette should increase sales of grocery stores in the Marston area. The argument is substantially flawed because it draws broad conclusion from debatable evidences offering dubious support for its claim.

The argument refers to a study in which items from a downtown Marston's store were advertised, derives its conclusion from the results of this study and applies it to the rest of the stores in Marston. Argument unwarrantedly assumes that this one store in downtown under study is typical of all stores in Marston. However, the store under study, being located in downtown, is accessible to patrons from all over the town and thus, cannot be representative of a store in suburb which caters only to limited shoppers residing in that particular area. Considering varying conditions of different stores at Marston in terms of customer base, location and products offered, all stores may not be benefitted by advertising in the Daily Gazette. Had the argument limited its conclusion to the stores in downtown, it would still have made a convincing case.

Arguments asserts that, out of 200 consumers who purchased one or more of the 30 items advertised in the Daily Gazette ,130 have read the advertisement and more than half of these 130 shoppers have spent more than $100 at this store. The correlation between spending more than $100 and buying one or more of the advertised product does not imply causality. For instance, if average spending at this store is $100 per consumer, then these consumers have spent just the average amount which otherwise also they could have spent. Having provided inconclusive information, argument draws untenably strong conclusion that advertising in the Daily Gazette will help in increasing the sales. In order to substantiate its claim, argument could have compared the weekly or monthly sales at the store under study so as to determine the increase in sales caused by advertising in the Daily Gazette.

In summary, argument is neither sound nor persuasive and fails to convey a compelling reasons for stores in Marston to advertise in the Daily Gazette.

TopPercentile · Answer

This is a well-written essay. My only critique is it would have been even stronger if a third flaw was identified. I usually identify three flaws in the argument and order them in terms of strength, starting with the biggest flaw.
In this argument, there is a second generalization flaw besides the one you already identified. Not all grocery items are price sensitive and hence will not benefit from the advertised price reduction. For example, advertising a reduced price of drain-opener won’t make people buy it if they don’t have a clogged drain at home. They are also unlikely to buy more drain-opener just because a reduced price was advertised.

lamawa · Answer

Hi,

Can anyone please review my AWA.

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."

The excerpt of the annual report sent to shareholders by olympic foods is flawed as it makes use of faulty assumptions and vague generalizations.
The report assumes that the cost of processing goes down overtime because organizations learn to do things better. This is a weak argument because there are a number of components that make up the cost of processing. These components include fixed costs like land and building and variable costs like the cost of raw materials, transportation to and from the processing facility, salaries and energy. A number of these components affect the economy on a macro level and are simply out of the control of Olympic Foods. For instance, if the cost of petrol goes up by 100% over the 14 year period, we expect the cost of powering the processing facility, and transportation to go up in commensurate amounts which can lead to an increase in the cost of production and has absolutely nothing to do with the experience of Olympic foods. A stronger argument could have been made if we had more information on the fixed and variable costs, macro economic data like inflation, employment rate over the time period in comparison,
The next faulty assumption is comparing the color film processing business to the food processing business. Food processing processes are logically expected to have a more complicated process than color printing. These industries are very different and are expected to have more differences than similarities in terms of their processes. They are also expected to be affected by very different micro-economic factors In the processing chain of food for instance, we expect storage before and after processing to be a significant component of the cost, whereas color film processing even if they have the need for storage will have less specific requirements which logically is expected to be cheaper. Hence a 100% increase in the cost of a food processing storage unit might not necessarily mean an increase in the cost of a color printing storage unit. A better approach here would be to compare a similar industry like beverage processing or other similar food companies which should have similar requirements and costs.
Another faulty assumption is the conclusion that the drop in the cost of producing a 3 by 5 inch print dropped solely because of the age of the company. This drop could have been initiated by a subsidy by the government on specific machinery or supplies, development of a new and improved technology by independent researchers among other things. Having more information about the cause of the drop would have helped improve the argument.
The conclusion of Omega foods on its magical increase in efficiency just because it turned 25 years needs to be re-thought all together as it is made on faulty assumptions.

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

There's an Official AWA product GMAC sells which can rate AWA in case you're interested. It mentions "Practice essays scored in real-time". https://www.mba.com/exam-prep/gmat-offi ... a-practice

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