Expert Reviews are Welcome - Please Grade my Essay :)

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How would you rate my AWA

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Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
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Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. This is my first real attempt at writing the AWA timed. Please be gentle.

Prompt:
The following appeared in a memorandum from the director of marketing for a pharmaceutical company

"According to a survey of 5,000 urban residents, the prevalence of stress headaches increases with educational level, so that stress headaches occur most often among people with graduate-school degrees. It is well established that, nationally, higher educational levels usually correspond with higher levels of income. Therefore, in marketing our new pain remedy, Onmilixir, we should send free samples primarily to graduate students and to people with graduate degrees, and we should concentrate on advertising in professional journals rather than in general interest magazines"



My Essay:
The causal link between the survey results and the corresponding recommendations of the Marketing Director seem to be drawn out of a misunderstanding of the survey results. This misunderstanding ultimately undermines the credibility of the survey to provide any meaningful and useful insight.

The main source of evidence to support the Marketing Directors conclusion is a survey that was given to a cohort of "5000 urban residents". Of course, any survey will produce results, but surveys, especially ill-conceived ones, are prone to errors. This survey is especially deficient by not having enough variety of those surveyed; diversification is a key component making surveys statistically significant and by only surveying "urban residents" will result in a very narrow view of possible responses. However, simply by diversifying those surveyed, while it would produce more variation in the answers given, doesn't help address if the survey is asking relevant questions. The author fails to give any indication of the quality of questions asked, further bringing into question the quality of this survey and that it is most likely flawed.

Having no evidence of creating a survey of any quality, the Marketing Director uses the survey findings with what seems to be "well-established" fact, that people with higher levels of education correspond with making more money, to deduce marketing tactics. Even when ignoring that the survey is flawed, the Marketing Director fails to take the contra into consideration that higher levels of education don't necessarily translate to making more money. It is well established that there are many 'educated poor', and marketing to this group of people would most likely not generate the expected revenue from the investments made. It's likely there was a misinterpretation that income distribution among the target group follows a standard 'bell curve' rather than having concentrations of income distribution among the target group with particular degrees.

The Marketing Director uses the data in a strange way where the pain remedy made by Omnilixir is effective for headaches with no evidence to say that it is only effective for headaches. The pain reliever may be a quality headache medication but may also be a viable pain reliever for such things as arthritis, swelling and any other number of use cases. It seems that was an opportunity to test if there are other potential use cases for the pain reliever through the survey. We don't actually know if the survey covers alternate questions that are not headache related, but we know that the only conclusions being drawn from this survey are related to questions involving headaches.

The Marketing Director ultimately draws flawed marketing strategy and tactics to help improve the position of the company from a deficient survey. Had the Marketing Director better prepared the survey for a wider audience, with quality questions, and quantified more accurately the use of "well-established" facts, they most likely would have had better data to make better decisions on how to target their customer.

The argument for the marketing tactics described is based on false information and false assumptions. The Marketing Director has failed to provide enough evidence to concentrate investments in the few channels mentioned.
Last edited by ndureault on Thu Dec 31, 2015 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
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by ndureault » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:48 pm
In the second last paragraph near the end, I would have changed "their customer" to "the consumers of Omnilixir". Changing the sentence would correct for the ambiguity of the word "their" as it is not clear what subject it is.

In the same sentence as above, after the comma, the word "they" is wrong for the same reasons.



In both cases, I meant "they" to the Marketing Director (not knowing if it is he or she), but not realizing that the other subject in the sentence could be the "wider audience."