GMAT Essays (AWA)

PROMPT:

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 forme levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper."

ESSAY:

An announcement issued by a publisher of the Mercury, a weekly newspaper, states that its sales declined by 10.000 readers due to the appearance of a lower priced competitor: The Bugle, 5 years ago. This statement lacks of evidence to support itself, and is really vague on the reasons why The Mercury lost 10.000 buyers per week.

First of all, from what is said, it is uncertain that the reason of the decline in the sales is the appearance of The Bugle. The publisher is simply assuming that. There may be lots of other reasons to that outcome, such as: the Mercury is failing to come up with more up to date content, or missing the interests of its target audience, maybe it isn't being marketed well, etc. They may also have missed that nowadays most people read newspapers online and not in paper, so if The Mercury didn't come up with an online version of its newspaper, that's definitely one big reason why they lost so many clients. Moreover, the price of newspapers is usually very low, and really doesn't determine buyers on which journal to purchase; what inclines clients for one or other newspaper is actually the content, the format, attractiveness, accessibility, among other aspects, but certainly not the price. Those are the aspects that the Mercury's editors should address if they wish to recover those 10.000 readers.

A good support to the publisher's argument would be to have a good survey that clearly determines that the reason of the decline in sales is the lower price of the competitor, or to know whether The Mercury did create its own online version of the newspaper. Clearly, the way it is stated, the publisher's argument to the decline of sales is insufficient.