Hi! I will have my GMAT next week and seems that esseys became a bit of issue for me know since English is not a mother tongue However, I do my best to create what I'm able to using the awsome template I have found in neigbouring trend.


The following appeared in an Excelsior Company memorandum:
"The Excelsior Company plans to introduce its own brand of coffee. Since coffee is an expensive food item, and since there are already many established brands of coffee, the best way to gain customers for the Excelsior brand is to do what Superior, the leading coffee company, did when it introduced the newest brand in its line of coffees: conduct a temporary sales promotion that offers free samples, price reductions, and discount coupons
for the new brand."
Discuss how well reasoned ... etc.


Adding new brand to the market with its existing rules and dominants always require aggressive sales and marketing approach. And this might be considered the best way to achieve solid results. In the preceding statement, the author claims that the best way to access coffee business for Excelsior Company is to copy industry leader's - the Superior Company brand strategy. This strategy includes price reduction for the new brand, additional promo samples offer and discount vouchers issue. The author of the argument believes that these marketing actions must work well to attract customers because coffee is an expensive item and because already many coffee manufacturers exist in the market. Though this claim may well have merit, the author presents a poorly reasoned argument, based on several questionable premises and assumptions, and based solely on the evidence the author offers, we can't accept his argument as valid.

The primary issue with the author's reasoning lies in his unsubstantiated premises. Firstly, the facts that coffee has number of well-developed brands in the market and that the coffee is relatively expensive product doesn't provide us enough evidences to say whether Superior's strategy should be copied or not. Secondly, we know nothing about new coffee brand features, strength, and weaknesses in order to evaluate if the marketing strategy can or can't be copied from one brand to another. At the same time we know nothing about the Excelsior Company's image on the market as well as Superior Company's success story and success reasons stay in shadow. Additionally, nowhere is written that Supreme Company is successful with described strategy. Hence, the author's premises, the basis of his argument, lack any legitimate evidentiary support and render his conclusion unacceptable.

In addition, the author makes several assumptions that remain unproven. Firstly, author wants us to accept as a truth that Excelsior and Superior companies have the same positions on coffee market and hence they can easily use each other's strategies for marketing and promotions. This is not true since the Excelsior is only trying to enter coffee market by issuing its first coffee product where Superior Company already has substantial amount of different coffee brands on the market. This means that what Superior Company uses for advertising may not work for the Excelsior Company. Secondly, price reductions don't always work fine for expensive products brand management and this may even damage new brand positioning. Same as free samples that can only work great if and only if the product quality is rally great; in other words it's better to try to sell something unknown rather than something that is known well from its negative side. The author weakens his argument by making assumptions and failing to provide explication of the links between Excelsior's with its new coffee brand and Superior and its brands (old and new ones) he assumes exists.

While the author does have several key issues in his argument's premises and assumptions, that is not to say that the entire argument is without base. In order to make argument stronger the author needs to provide the following facts. First, additional evidences to prove that Excelsior's new coffee brand is really extremely tasty (like it won some award for its quality and taste). Second, additional info that proves similarity of these two companies' reputations on the market. Words "according to the recent independent market research companies Supreme and Excelsior share the first place in cacao brand perception" could work. Third, add an info that explains why expensive products that already have variety of brands on the market need to be promoted using Superior Company's and only its strategy. Though there are several issues with the author's reasoning at present, with research and clarification, he could improve his argument significantly.

In sum, the author's illogical argument is based on unsupported premises and unsubstantiated assumptions that render his conclusion invalid. Right now we can only make our best guess about what the author tries to advocate but in no way argument like this can be considered convincing. If the author truly hopes to change his readers' minds on the issue, he would have to largely restructure his argument, fix the flaws in his logic, clearly explicate his assumptions, and provide evidentiary support. Without these things, his poorly reasoned argument will likely convince few people.