GMAT Task 04: The Mercury
by PJWisaksono
Task 04
Date: 6 September 2016
Question:
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 former levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discussion what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
Source: http://www.mba.com/~/media/Files/mba/NEWTheGMAT/AnalysisofanArgument100606.pdf
My Answer (corrections and/or comments available in the brackets are made by Mrs Amanda, a teacher of IELC Solo):
Due to the lower-priced newspaper published by a competitor named The Bugle (put in italics like the prompt did), The Mercury claimed that it has experienced a relatively dramatic decline on its readers by 10,000. Hence, The Mercury, a weekly newspaper publisher, announced to cut its price to until below to its competitor and it will stay at this price occur until the circulation returns back to former levels. (Make sure to paraphrase more by using different words and phrases. Don’t forget that the writer believes that if The Mercury gains more readers, this will result in an increase in busineses investing in addvertisements in the newspaper.)
In that case, the announcement of the management is not well-supported by some facts before making decision. At first, there is no information whether the decline in the circulation affects significantly affects to the revenues or not. If the decline is inline with the decreasing revenues, the publisher may have to take make firm actions. If The Mercury still makes profit, it should not lower its newspapers’ price. (Why? Also, the writer makes the assumption that The Bungle has taken readers from The Mercury without providing any evidence to prove this.)
Second, the management writer did not consider other factors that perhaps determined the drop of its circulation within the last five years. Some factors might include that could happen such as the quality of the content, (No comma when listing only 2 items) and the ineffectiveness of its transportation system. Perhaps The Mercury gave its readers with topics that were not up-to-date, presented uninterested topics, or used bad visualizations. The transportation, on the other hand, might also take part in to the decreasing circulation. For example, some cars were in trouble, (No comma) or there was no electronic transportation system to control the circulation.
Third, using The Bugle as a barometer to what The Mercury wanted to do for the future might not be relevant. Probably, both The Bugle and The Mercury have different segments segmentation. The writer management of The Mercury should understand who the what it will be its targeted readers are. On In the announcement, The Mercury the writer tends to focus on obtaining advertisements’ rents from business people. So, it might be that The Mercury offers news mainly towards business people; however, there is no explanation of this provided in the writer’s argument. Then, the business people commonly do not ponder on how much the price of the newspaper is. (This was related to the number of readers in the arguement, not the price. Try to avoid too much speculation, and focus more on the arguement of the writer.) Their The writer’s stances whether to put advertisements on The Mercury must be based on concrete evidence and sound reasoning some variables. For instance, who the typical readers of The Mercury are and where The Mercury are sold. (focus on thesis statement at the end of the paragraph or the main idea of this paragraph.)
The last Finally, the reasons of the declining circulation and how to attract more businesses to buy advertising space in The Mercury is also about its marketing strategy. In that case, The Mercury can be indicated not having a good team for its marketing. It failed to market its advertising spaces that led to the lost of circulation. (Focus more on providing an analysis of the arguement in the prompt rather than the business mentioned in the text.)
To sum up, the announcement is too shallow to be used in as a corporate action. The mercury must consider some arguable factors mentioned above. (summarize your main points)
Italic Words: Words corrected and/or added by the teacher
Underlined Words: Words that should be omitted and/or changed
Words in Brackets: comments from the teacher
Sample Answer 1:
This argument is unconvincing because it relies on too many assumptions that aren’t necessarily true. There are three areas that merit further explanations before this author should receive any credibility.
My first problem with this argument is about the circulation of the paper, There are many other factors such as quality of the content of the paper, locations covered, awareness of the people etc… will also effect the circulation decline apart from the price. So the author should also concentrate on the above factors before making any conclusion.
My second problem with the statement is that reduce its pricing sounds illogical, as the printing costs, salaries to the employees and other infrastructure, which incurs for producing the newspaper, will decide the pricing. Sudden reduction of the price without proper calculation on the above may challenge to run the newspaper. Further more, sudden reduction in the pricing readers may doubt on the quality of the paper and which may lead to further decline in the readership.
Lastly, I take issue with the publisher’s analysis and survey; do the publisher considered the quality, market penetration, size of the paper and advertisement, which are essential points to increase the readership? If ‘Bungle’ scores high on the above points then answer is in front of us for Mercury’s readership decline.
There are just too many holes in this argument, so it is difficult to take author seriously, unless some further evidence surfaces in each of the three areas described above. The premises that are presented are insufficient proof that the conclusion is viable.
PJWisaksono 