The following was used as part of an internet advertising company's appeal to businesses: "Furniture Depot employed our internet advertising company to help. Since then its sales increased by 10% over last year's totals. Furniture Depot's success demonstrates how using our internet services can increase your profitability."



Many more companies use the internet-based advertisement as a marketing tool. Some have an intern department, while other work with extern companies specialized in marketing. While the company does adress a significant example of how it improved a client's profitability thanks to tits services, the logic of its argument and the conclusion it reaches are both fundamentally flawed. Not only do the premises of the argument fail to support adequatly the conclusion, but the conclusion would, if true, give an unjustified image of the company's work.

The primary issue with the company's reasoning lies in its unsibstantiated premises. It is inaccurate to consider that a ten percent increased in sales is a success without evidences prooving that sales have improved compared to last year. Furthermore, the argument states that Furniture Depot needed help. The company fails to precise wether its client was already using internet marketing. It could have been a new marketing tool added to others that already existed. In that case, the "success" cannot be thanks to the marketing company only.

In addition, the author makes several assumptions that remain unproven. First of all, the argument still depends on the sales of the previous year, and their increasing or decreasing rate. For example, if the sales increased by 20% between 2008 and 2009, and by 10% between 2009 and 2010, we cannot say that the internet advertising had significant results. In the same way, there is not enough information to say if Furniture Depot was already using a marketing strategy (intern or extern), in which case the overall succes of the marketing company is unproven. Finally, increasing sales does not always imply an increasing profits, since marketing costs may have increase.

Consequently, the argument is not completely sound. The evidence in support of the conclusion does little to prove the conclusion because it does not address the assumptions already rised. Utlimately, that argument might have been strenghtend by considering the previous sales performances of the company, its marketing strategy (if it had one) and the reach profitability by dollar of sale.

Hi, thanks for posting your essays! Just an FYI that instructors don't grade or give feedback on essays (see the forum guidelines for details).

But I certainly hope other community members respond. Also, if you're in our class, you'll have an opportunity to get essays graded and get written feedback during the course (after class 6).

Finally, you can get essays graded by GMAT Write (the official essay grading service from the makers of the exam) - they'll both grade the essays and provide feedback as to how to improve (for a fee). For details and pricing, go to www.mba.com and search for GMAT Write.

Oh - and this article might help you to check your essay yourself. It wasn't written for the purpose of grading essays, but it tells you the main things you should do to write a good essay:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2009/12/ ... -no-thanks

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

This essay needs proof-reading. 'Tits' service - that is smth new in e-biz :)

nice catch, igor :)

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT