GMAT Essays (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 sales 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



The recommendation endorsed in this argument is that grocery stores should buy their advertising space in the Daily Gazette. This suggestion is based on the premise that in last month, a store in downtown Marston has proved that this advertising strategy is successful because majority of the customers were exposed by the advertisement and spent lot of money in the store.

However, there are several assumptions that may not apply necessarily to this argument. For example, profits must be greater than the cost of advertisement that is all it matters at the end of the day. Furthermore, the magazine should be fairly equally distributed throughout the town otherwise, certain parts of the town are favored over the others. Finally, one must look into last month's result and ensure the plausibility of the evidence as only sufficient amount of statistical data over reasonable period of time to prove its point not just a single data at a single point of time.

The primary issue to be addressed is that this proposal may sound promising, yet there is not a single commentary about actual profits. The author's intention is transparent; used classic advertising strategy by emphasizing merits and evading the down sides. At the end of the day, net profits must be the biggest concerns and must be considered as key factors of decision-making. For example, despite increment of the sales and customers from the advertising, owners are going to lose their money if they have to pay the magazine more than that they have earned. If one can't make a promise but instead misleading audience with fallacious evidence is no better than a fraud.

In precedent statement, the author referred to sales of a store in downtown Marston as a successful example, majority of customers have read its promotion and purchased items that were publicized on the paper. However, a few assumptions remain questionable. For example, did the promotion actually persuaded customers to make their way to the store rather than people answered 'affirmative' because they all saw the first page of the promotion as it was distributed everywhere on the streets. They might have been just regular customers who usually spends over $100 at a time and just happened to be participated the survey. Moreover, the results would be biased if the distribution was not made equally over the entire town rather than focusing downtown.

Lastly, one's argument must be supported by substantial evidence. Presenting one-month worth sales at one store, as evidence is probably not sufficient enough in this case. The following month would have been the busiest time of the store regardless of the promotion. Exemplary figures must involve several stores; vary in sizes, locations and comparison with individual budgets through at least a couple of years. Therefore, author's argument lacks of legitimate evidentiary support and render his conclusion unacceptable.

To sum up, we would not invest our money on this promotion unless the author provides stronger supports for the assumptions. In order to develop such support, it would have to involve wide range of examples and eliminating other possible causal factors.