Please grade my first AWA

This topic has expert replies
User avatar
Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:24 am

Please grade my first AWA

by shaanmir93 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:29 am
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 sale 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.

Respones:

The argument makes several assumptions in relation to the argument "Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. The argument sites a survey of shoppers, who purchased the items in the last four days, stating that they read the Ad prior to their visit to the store as evidence for the effectiveness of the ad campaign. The argument fails to consider whether consumer reaction to sales at grocery stores mimic reactions to sales at "downtown" stores, in addition to a failure to consider alternative causes of consumers spending over $100 at the store, when they have purchased the items listed on sale.

A critical part of the argument is that grocery stores, upon advertising in the Daily Gazette, will experience similar results to downtown location stores. This argument fails to justify two major flaws in logic, that the grocery store consumers have the same tendencies as consumers of a downtown location store, and that the grocery stores may not be located in areas accessible as easily as the downtown location stores; this paragraph will examine the first flaw. Grocery store consumers may view sales of grocery items as items that have expired, or are near expiry, and thus the grocery store is attempting to sell its inventory at a discount to recover its costs. This could in turn provide a signal to consumers that the grocery store is not able to sell its product and thus many of its other products have been stocked close to their shelf lives, deterring consumers from shopping at the store, and ultimately reducing sales. It would be advantageous to conduct a survey of grocery store consumers to guage a preliminary understanding of how they would react to sales on grocery items, if consumers react favorably to sale items, then advertisement of sale items would draw more customers to the store.

Secondly, the argument fails to accurately compare the locations of the two stores. The store on which the study was conducted, is a downtown location store, while grocery stores tend to be on the outskirts of cities. The argument fails to identify whether the locaton of the store will have an impact on the consumers spending habits, in that, it is possible that consumers were purchasing the sale items from the downtown stores due to the ease of purchase. The pedestrian traffic downtown is significantly greater than the outskirt sof town, and thus many customers may havepurchased the item due to its price and the fact that it was close to them. In the event that the sale price is not enough of a justification for the consumers to travel to the store, the grocery store may not increase its overall sales, as the drop in price would not be offset by an appropriate increase in customers.

Lastly, the advertisement assumes the causal relationship of the advertisement leading to consumers going to the store and purchasing over $100 of items. The argument does not take into account whether these consumers were regular customers of the store, whether the item purchased was over $100 in value, or whether the other items were meant to be purchased prior to the customer visitng the store. If the consumers who purchased the sale item were regular customers of the store, and were likely to have purchased the sale item regardless of the advertisement, then the store did not gain additional sales due to the advertisement, rather they would have lost money due to the advertisement fees. We would need to determine what amount of customers are regular patrons to the store in order to determine whether this advertisement was truly the root cause of the excess purchase.

In conclusion, the argument fails to consider the factors listed above and thus is weak.