GMAT Essays (AWA)

"On average, middle-aged consumers devote 39 percent of their retail expenditure to department store products and services, while for younger consumers the average is only 25 percent. Since the number of middle-aged people will increase dramatically within the next decade, department stores can expect retail sales to increase significantly during that period. Furthermore, to take advantage of the trend, these stores should begin to replace some of those products intended to attract the younger consumer with products intended to attract the middle-aged consumer."

The author of the column is willing to state that since middle-aged consumers are spending greater percentage of their wealth on department store products and since their number will grow in the next decade, department stores will experience a rise of sales, and thus, should reorganize its marketing strategies, targeting to middle-aged people. This argument as it is stated contains several logical gaps and can be criticized from many fronts. The main conclusion cannot be derived logically unless additional evidence is presented.

The major flaw of the argument is that the author assumes as a truth that the purchasing habits of the middle aged people will not change in the next decade, and that middle-aged people will spend the same percentage of their money on department store products. This is a rough extrapolation of the current situation to the next ten years, and is illogical. The dynamics of spending of different demographic groups is as essential to the argument as their size. For example, we can have a situation, when younger people will spend much more in the department stores than they do now. Author do not take this into account.

Another flaw is that the author, predicting the future growth of the revenues, compares spending of only two groups of people - younger consumers and middle-aged consumers. No other evidence is presented that these two groups are the major consumers of the department stores. At the same time, we can have a situation when other demographic or social groups contribute much more to the sales of department stores than middle-aged consumers do. For example, older people can spend more. It is essential for the author's argument to analyze the effect of these groups to the financial success of the department stores. The argument would be strengthened if the author shown that these groups are not essential to the subject, or their size and their purchasing habits will not change in the future.

Finally, reorientation of the marketing strategy to the middle-aged people can have side-effects. If the department store will loose young consumers, it can also loose parents of these young consumers as a customers. There is a common situation that people shop with their family. The author do not provide any data, whether middle-aged consumers that visit the stores come their with their children, so we can't exclude the fact that the store will loose some of these consumers.

Having not analyzed the dynamics of group spending and the effect of the other groups, author constructs the argument that can not be considered logical. The gap in argumentation is rather big, and the proper argument should contain additional evidences as described above. Without this, the author's conclusion can not be accepted.

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After I have written this essay, I thought that the author's argumentation is not that weak.
Would it be better to say, that the author's argument makes sence but is rather extrapolative and assumptive? Where is the better place for this?

What would be your rate? Should I improve further, or it's ok?