shreeneewas

Hi All, Please give me your comments on this issue -> Harsher the better .... To Erin : Kindly comment this arg. Can we discuss any tougher argument topics ???? shrini ************************************************* Shriniwas Joshi Time Taken : 40 Min ************************************************************* The following appeared in a memorandum issued by the strategic planning department at Omni Inc. "Mesa Foods, a manufacturer of snack foods that currently markets its products within a relatively small region of the country, has strong growth potential. Mesa enjoyed a 20 percent increase in profits last year, and its best-selling product, Diabolique Salsa, has had increased sales over each of the past three years. Since Omni Inc. is interested in reaching 14-to-25 year olds, the age group that consumes the most snack food, we should buy Mesa Foods, and concentrate in particular on marketing Diabolique Salsa throughout the country." ************************************************************* Notes to reader : 1] Please suggest me flaw points for "Diabolique Salsa, has had increased sales over each of the past three years." 2] I needed almost 40 min for completing. Please suggest me ways to reduce this time ************************************************************* The strategic plannig department of Omni Inc finds Mesa Foods a fine target for future investment. They have arrived at this conclusion after considering many factors such as increase in company profits and products sales. Although these are the major factor that can drive investment decisions , they have neglected many other factors that may severely affect the end result of this investment and hence this argument is not convincing and may put Omni Inc on the dangerous path. While taking this decision the planning department considered only the last year profit of the company , instead its previous 5 years profile would have been much more dependable input to the decision making process. And due to this we are not convinced that Mesa foods is indeed a profitable company. For example many companies , when dilute their stakes in any loss making subsidiaries , they show it as an income in their balance sheet which is an established practice. Many a times the regional government bodies give waiver of the taxes to encourage the local industry which may get reflected as an profit in the balance sheet. All these possibilities indicate that mere 1 previous year profit figures are not enough to judge the performance of the company. The Omni foods aims to reach particular age group for their products. But they have not considered whether this requirement is matched by the Mesa foods products. What if the consumers of Mesa food do not fall into the targeted age group of Omni ? You can not sell a snack food that a 14 yrs boy eats to an adult consumer ? If this factor is not considered , then it may seriously affect the success of the Omni's future strategies. Does what sells in one part of the country sells everywhere ? Should not we consider the regional taste and flavor that drives the choice of the consumer ? The Mesa food is a player in a small region and hence it serves a local band of consumers. But this regional taste may not be popular throughout the country. In that case even its best selling products may fall to their competitors in other territories . Here the planners are coming to hasty decision after ignoring this decisive factor. Again the combination of age groups and regional taste needs to be identified. The particular age group in one region may prefer something that a same group my reject in other part. For example the regional taste in the North and South territories of India vastly differs and hence one can not draw the conclusion based on the data available only from either North of South region. In summary , the planners fail to provide enough evidence to support their claim. They have neglected many factors in this process which may spell disaster to the Omni Inc if this proposal is accepted. Hence due to incomplete information , improper analogies and hasty conclusion , proposal by the planner should not be accepeted as it remains debatable and tottered. *************************************************************

Hey, i need advice from you guys .... my exam is on 12th nov and D days is nearing very fast .... i am facing lots of problems on verbal ... i have read almost all word list. while doing this i arranged all the words in different groups depending upon meaning say ABUSE , SILLY , FIGHT/VOILENT etc etc ... so that way i have made around 35-40 groups .. and this way i have covered almost 38-40 lists from barrons .. i am reading these lists regurarly ( not really but i try to keep my schedule ;) ) ... but even then i find myself forgetting the words and especially while working on antonyms and analogies i always go wrong .. this is getting very very frustating to me .. i also tried flash cards and i have made cards for all the high frequency words but due to time contraint ( i am working as a software engineer -- almost 10-11 hrs job :( ) i never have any free time as such ... so on this background can u suggest me any different methodology i should adopt to increase my rentention capacity .. i still have 3 weeks to go and i m ready to change my tactic if necessary ... kindly reply asap ... shrini

Hey, you all guys just gr8 and working hard .. so best of luck to all of you there .... kaushik's score is really impressive .. congrats to you yaar!!!! i need advice from you guys .... my exam is on 12th nov and D days is nearing very fast .... i am facing lots of problems on verbal ... i have read almost all word list. while doing this i arranged all the words in different groups depending upon meaning say ABUSE , SILLY , FIGHT/VOILENT etc etc ... so that way i have made around 35-40 groups .. and this way i have covered almost 38-40 lists from barrons .. i am reading these lists regurarly ( not really but i try to keep my schedule ;) ) ... but even then i find myself forgetting the words and especially while working on antonyms and analogies i always go wrong .. this is getting very very frustating to me .. i also tried flash cards and i have made cards for all the high frequency words but due to time contraint ( i am working as a software engineer -- almost 10-11 hrs job :( ) i never have any free time as such ... so on this background can u suggest me any different methodology i should adopt to increase my rentention capacity .. i still have 3 weeks to go and i m ready to change my tactic if necessary ... kindly reply asap ... shrini

Hi Priyanka, Thanks a lot for your comments. There is no question of taking this in a wrong way as I posted it for same purpose. OK lets me answer your comments 1. Rewriting the stuff : Well I have read ( somewhere .. ) that we should rewrite the authors argument as summary in the begining. But I think I have wrote it very long , I will shorten it next time. But now my basic doubt is - should we summarize argument in the 1st para ? Will Erin comment on this ???? 2. About example : They say that we should provide hypothetical examples to support our point as examples are more powerfull to make the point. Am I wrong ??? plz comment ? 3. about high sales of Plainsville merchants. I MISSED this point .... thanks lot. 4. The point about "exercise raiment" is very apt and well taken. Again I missed this. All in all ... thanks a lot for your comments. My GRE is on 12th nov ... when is yours ???? My buggest concern is I have not started with issues ... any help you can provide like tips to get started .... can you catch me on yahoo .. mine is shri420_2000 ???? shrini

Hi Priyanka, Thanks a lot for your comments. There is no question of taking this in a wrong way as I posted it for same purpose. OK lets me answer your comments 1. Rewriting the stuff : Well I have read ( somewhere .. ) that we should rewrite the authors argument as summary in the begining. But I think I have wrote it very long , I will shorten it next time. But now my basic doubt is - should we summarize argument in the 1st para ? Will Erin comment on this ???? 2. About example : They say that we should provide hypothetical examples to support our point as examples are more powerfull to make the point. Am I wrong ??? plz comment ? 3. about high sales of Plainsville merchants. I MISSED this point .... thanks lot. 4. The point about "exercise raiment" is very apt and well taken. Again I missed this. All in all ... thanks a lot for your comments. My GRE is on 12th nov ... when is yours ???? My buggest concern is I have not started with issues ... any help you can provide like tips to get started .... can you catch me on yahoo .. mine is shri420_2000 ???? shrini

Hi, I am a new member and posting my first argument. kindly comment on the same. thanks shrini ***** The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Nature's Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products. "Previous experience has shown that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build our next new store in Plainsville, which has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville's schoolchildren are required to participate in a 'fitness for life' program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age." ****************** The Vice President ( VP ) of the company is proposing to open next new health food store of the company in the Plainville as he finds that place commercial more attractive. There are various reasons that the VP cites to support his decision. His previous experience in the industry directs him to open the shop in the areas where the residents are concerned with the health related issues and he finds this category of residents at Plainsville. Also the feedback from local merchants informs him about rising sales of sports shoes , exrecise equipments and clothing. The local health clubs are doing very good business and are full with memberships. All these pieces information are pointing towards rising interest among the residents for healthy life so it makes commercial sense for the VP. Also he predicts rise in the potential customers as local schools are giving importance to physical programs that will make the students equally concious about their health. I find that the proposal forwarded by VP is based on loosely coupled premises with too many gaps wanting to be bridged to make it more convincing. The VP refers to his "previous experince" to predict the destination for potential profit center for his business. But the term "previous experience" is not very apealing to the reader as he does not get any clue on the type of experience the VP had. Also the VP is not elaborating the other factors that might have affected his previous business. The factors like the financial status , educational background and demographic details of the of the residents play a major role in the health food business. All these factors must have contributed to his sucess in previous experience. Are these paramaters similiar to what VP finds in Plainsville ? The other store of Nature's Way is located at King's Beach Arc where all the residents are from films and media business with very oppulant standard of living . They are very cautious about their look and feel hence invest a very large sum of their budget on health food etc. But the experience similair to King's Beach can not be expected at Plainsville as most of the residensts here are from salaried class with very less disposable income. Hence although the health awareness is very high , the residents give very low preferance to investment in expensive health food than to physical exercises. Is Health Club business is similair to the Health Food store business ? Apart from offering the weight traing and aerobics classes these clubs offer a platform for social gathering. And hence residents esp. young people prefer to spend time at these clubs. They find it much more attractive to gather at one pubic place and work together as they consider this a "quality time" spent with their friends . Can a health food store offer this feeling among its customers ? Is it not a "any another" store where custmer buys a product from and leaves that place immediately . He not getting a feeling of a social enviroment at this store. This precisely proves that the two business are poles apart and should not be compared. This is a very unsuitable analogy that VP is drwaing which makes his argument even more unsound. There is one more factor that is favoring health clubs , works against the health food business which certainly would have played a major role in running the clubs. The physicians , goverment agencies and even nutritionist are aggressivley proposing the use of natural food in the daily diet coupled with high importance to physical exercises as a long term and most favorable policy for living healthy life. Due to compaign the residents are getting more attracted to physical exrcises and at the same time tey are avoiding the artificial health food in their diet. In response to this change in outlook the schools are giving importance to physical training in their curriculum. They are organising 'fitness for life' pragrams to increase the awareness among the schoolchildren. And ofcourse thanks to the active campaign by many agencies all thse children are going to avoid the use of health food and would give way to applying physical and nutrition realted training that they have gained in 'fitness for life' pragram. And so instead of becoming the customers these schoolchildren are the potential opponants to Nature's Way products. So although VP expected this piece of information to make his claim more cogent , instead it shatters it to fragile and impotent form. In conclusion since the VP of Nature's Way makes several questionable assumptions , provides incompatible analogies based on incomplete information and fails to analyse many hidden facets affecting his business model , the argument remains disputable and hence tottered. ***********************************************************