Step 3.1: Peer-edit you partner's writing

This is the step where another pair of eyes look at my text to identify errors I might have overlooked. This will be done by using the Peer-Editing Worksheet 2 from the book Writing Academic English. The worksheet looks as follows:

And here are Florian's findings (March 8, 2011):

It was and still is seen as normal that fair-trade products are sold at a higher retail price than non-fair-trade products, and this higher retail price is why the sales rates of fair-trade companies, such as Day Chocolate, are not as high as those of non-fair-trade companies who obtain their resources at debatable prices (long introduction sentence). Therefore, Day Chocolate decided to sell their products at the same retail price as their non-fair-trade competitors. Consequently, they enabled buyers to have the feeling of being ethically responsible without having to pay more than usual (could have been more academic)  . This convenience assists customers to make the step from (exchange)  established brands to(for) an alternative  fair-trade brand.

    

 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). However, it will only create revenue if customers are willing to substitute their regular products for 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. To conclude, the penetration pricing technique enabled Day Chocolate to establish themselves in the (fair-trade) chocolate market and, due to the rise of customer awareness, to achieve 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 their customers will keep purchasing their products even if the price would rise. Knowing this, Day Chocolate started to participate in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and the company even has its own Youtube channel.

 Nowadays there is no better way to establish and maintain relationships with customers than through the internet. By doing this, Day Chocolate created a unique 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.

Answers to the worksheet:

1.        Yes. How Day Chocolate solves certain issues related to performing a fair-trade business and what options there are to soften the effects of the high elasticity.

2.        Yes.

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

4.        3/4

a. He introduces ideas of well-known experts, such as quotes from Alfred Marshall, and implements certain theories about the topic, found in the marketing book.

            b. No.

5.        No.

6.        Yes.

            a. Price (elasticity)

            b. Yes.

            c. However, Here, Therefore.

d. The structure starts with introducing the topic and provide basic facts to support his arguments later on. Secondly, implemented strategy. Thirdly, pricing of products. Finally, conclude with their solution.

7.        Nowadays there is no better way (informal/ maybe to extreme) to establish and maintain relationships with customers than through the internet. By doing this, Day Chocolate created a unique 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.

            A real conclusion is not provided. A ending-sentence would be pleasant to summarize or finalize your thoughts or topic. 

8.        He made use of a nice quote to back up his findings.

Personally, I liked the paper, it was well-written and pleasant to read. However, at some points the structure might have been slightly more clear. Nevertheless, the use of academic words was considerably good, though as I mentioned some words were quite extreme and slightly informal. Finally, the provided facts/ supporting arguments did really relate to the topic and supported the topic sentences.

Taking Florian's remarks into account I revised my part. Since the MS Word Track Changes tool does not show on a copy/paste text I posted a print screen off the first two paragraphs, which needed a revision. The third paragraph is left unchanged.

Reflection:
As we can see above, this step indeed resulted in discovering more errors. Therefore, this is one I will definitely be using for future assignments.