GMAT Essays (AWA)

"Since a competing lower-priced newspaper , The Bugles, 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 the circulation increases to former levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper"

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The author concludes that The Mercury newspaper should lower it prices until it reaches its former circulation level. Author's line of reasoning is based on the information that competing newspaper, The Burgles, is comparatively lower priced than that of The Mercury and thus is able to attract more readers. In the argument speaker assumes that people buy a newspaper only because it is lower priced. The argument is unconvincing for several reasons.

Firstly, the author solely attributes the decrease in the readership of The Mercury to the lower price of The Burgles. He doesn't seem to consider other factors which might have caused the decrease in readership of The Mercury like the quality of news published in The Burgles might have been better than that of The Mercury's. There is also a possibility that the decrease in sales might have been due to readers switching to other sources of gathering information like internet.

Secondly, the argument has a questionable assumption that people tend to buy a newspaper only because it is lower priced. There are various factors which contribute to people's judgment such as the quality of news, the attractiveness,the price etc. Without a proper study, concluding that price is the only factor makes the argument unacceptable. Plus, it doesn't seem to consider the situation - what if The Burgles reduce the price of its paper further? Then author's conclusion that The Mercury has to lower it's prices again raises a serious doubt on The Mercury's survival in the market.

The argument would have been more persuasive if the author had conducted a survey to find why people prefer The Burgles to The Mercury. Also, the author should have studied other factors which might have caused the decrease in the sales of The Mercury such as readers switching to other sources of information like internet, mobile news.

On the whole, the argument is based on unsupported assumption and lacks necessary information to reach the conclusion that The Mercury should lower its prices until it reaches previous circulation levels.

I feel the conclusion should have been better. Plz suggest