Response to the recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books

Hi everyone! I am practicing for GRE Essays

Question:

The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books.

"We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because it is known for its wide selection of books on all subjects. Clearly, opening the café would attract more customers. Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the children's book section, which will probably become less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten. Opening a café will allow Monarch to attract more customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened its own café."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

Essay:
The Board of Directors of Monarch Books has recommended that it opens a cafe in its store to attract more customers and better compete with it's rival Regal Books. To assert their recommendation, they addressed two major issues: the space required and customer attraction. Space can be made by discontinuing children's section and as for customer attraction, the store already has a large customer base, and opening the cafe will only bring in more people. However, these claims look good superficially but when analysed in-depth, multiple unwarranted assumptions portray otherwise.

The directors have decided to discontinue children's section to open the cafe but they have not acknowledged the percentage of the current sales from selling to children. What percentage do these sales account for in the total? Is it insignificant or is it large enough to create a lapse in the profit of the enterprise? To validate this part of the argument, a survey of the age group of people visiting the store would be quite useful. The result of the national census would carry no value if the majority of sales are from children in Monarch Books. This decision will only lead to a decline in sales and consequently the profit of the company.

Another assumption the Board has made is that by opening a cafe, it will attract more customers. But they have not addressed the issue of retaining the existing customers. Will opening a cafe avert some existing customers? Some people might visit the store because of the peace and silence it provides. The existing customers might prefer this store as they can read in solitary. But by opening a cafe, the whole place will be bustling with activity and some people might choose to avoid visiting it. If so, this evidence weakens the recommendation.

It is also established that Regal Books have recently opened a cafe, but the success of the store after the opening is not given. If Regal Books have faced a decline in their sales, then this would completely be in opposition to the prediction that the directors have arrived at. This detail is very important in strengthening or weakening the board's claim.

To conclude, opening a store might look like a great idea from an outside perspective to enlarge business of the store, but much thought and consideration needs to be put before taking this decision. As stated above, the existing pieces of evidence are not sufficiently valid and it would be in the good interest of the store that the Board reevaluates the claim and provide enough supporting arguments such as surveys before jumping to a conclusion.

Amazing! I do believe that you have written a 5 scoring essay response here. Although there are some problems with your word choices and sentence structures, You did a good job of clearly explaining your analysis of the given situation. You definitely show elements of effective writing in this case. However, I would have liked to see even more sentence variety from you in the presentation. Also, maybe brush up on your every day English vocabulary? You have a tendency to use some words out of context. Examples of these are:

Will opening a cafe avert some customers?

The word avert doesn't feel natural in this presentation. I think you should have used other alternatives like divert or deter. These are more naturally sounding word alternatives that mean the same thing, to turn away clients.

Towards the end, you suddenly indicated, "opening a store". The board of directors are not recommending the opening of a store, they are suggesting the opening of a cafe within the store. Those are two different presentations but I can see why you would become confused. The cafe was opening in the store so you thought a new store was being opened. Let's chalk that one up to word confusion on your part. No matter, it did not affect your overall presentation anyway.