1.3: Examine paragraph content and organisation

The intenstion of this step is to create paragraph structure by identifying a topic sentence, the controlling idea, the supporting sentences and the concuding sentence in each paragraph. The structure will be flawed if one of these is lacking. The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph and also contains the controlling idea which specifies the area to be discussed. The main idea is developed by using supporting sentences that explain or prove the topic sentence by providing information. At the end of the paragraph could be a concluding sentence to end the paragraph and leave the reader with important information, but this is not always necessary. To be honest, I did not pay attention to these criteria for a well structured paragraph during the writing process. Therefore, these paragraphs will need some alterations. In my revision, I will colour the topic sentence blue, the controlling idea green, the supporting sentence orange and the concluding sentence purple. Now I will start with the first paragraph.

When looking at the first sentence,

It was and still is seen as normal that fair-trade products are sold at a higher retail price as non fair-trade products, and this higher retail price is why fair-trade companies, such as Day Chocolate, do not reach sales rates that equal the sales rates of normal companies who obtain their resources at questionable prices.

we can locate the topic sentence and the controlling idea. So there is no need to revise this sentence. If the structure of the paragraph is correct, the next section of this paragraph should contain a supporting sentence and possibly a concluding sentence.

Therefore, Day Chocolate decided to sell their products at the same retail price as their non fair-trade competitors. By doing this, they enabled buyers to have the feeling of being ethically responsible without having to pay more than usual. This convenience assists customers to make the step from regular brands to a fair-trade brand.

The supporting sentences are present, but there is no clear concluding sentence. However, since this is an introductory paragraph a concluding sentence is not necessary. Now, using the same technique, I will continue with the remaining paragraphs in which I am not going to further elaborate the steps taken, unless there needs to be an alteration.

The strategy used by Day Chocolate is the penetration pricing strategy. Penetration pricing is a technique that uses a low price to attract new customers to eventually achieve a high turnover rate (Monroe 2003). But it only works if customers are willing to switch to fair-trade products, which is, luckily for Day Chocolate, a tendency that was initiated a few years ago due to people becoming more aware of environmentally and ethically responsible consuming.

As you can see all parts for a well structured paragraph are present, except for the concluding sentence. And since all the last sentences are supporting sentences, a new concluding sentence has to be added. The book Writing Academic English states that a concluding sentence serves two purposes:
1. It signals the end of the paragraph
2. It leaves the reader with the most important ideas to remember. It can do this in two ways:
    - By summarizing the main points of the paragraph
       OR
    - By repeating the topic sentence in different words
Knowing this, I came up with the following sentence which I will add to the end of the paragraph:
- To conclude, the penetration pricing technique enabled Day Chocolate to acces the (fair-trade) chocolate market and, due to the rise of customer awareness, will lead to a high turnover rate.

A major problem that Day Chocolate faces is the fact that the demand for fair-trade products is highly elastic, because of inexpensive non fair-trade alternatives. According to Alfred Marshall: “the elasticity (or responsiveness) of demand in a market is great or small according as the amount demanded increases much or little for a given fall in price, and diminishes much or little for a given rise in price". Here, highly elastic demand means, that a slight increase in price could lead to a considerable loss in sales and vice versa. Therefore, Day Chocolate had to establish a bond with their customers to ensure that they will stay with Day Chocolate even if the price would increase. Knowing this, Day Chocolate became active in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and the company even has its own Youtube channel, because nowadays there is no better way to establish and maintain relationships with customers than through the internet. By doing this, Day Chocolate created an exceptional bond not only between the company and its customers, but also between its suppliers and customers.

Contrary to the second paragraph there is a concluding sentence in the last paragraph. However it is not sufficient. Therefore, this last sentence needs to be revised:
- By doing this, Day Chocolate created an exceptional bond not only between the company and its customers, but also between its suppliers and customers, so to overcome the problem of high elasticity of their fair-trade products.


Reflection:
Due to this step I realised how important a well build structure to the fluency of a paragraph is. And eventhough I did not pay attention to it during the writing process, I think I did quite well. The next time I have to write an assignment, I will take this step into account during the writing process and not mainly during the revision.