When writing an evaluative essay, it is important to establish the criteria for evaluating. The criteria for evaluation ensures that when you are writing the essay you are not simply expressing your opinion about the business or industry you are evaluation. Regardless of what the business is ,you should be able to set out particular standards as to what any good type of business in the field you are researching should be like. For example, if you are evaluating a delivery business you need to set out what sort of criteria there should be for a good delivery service. For instance, you should be able to discuss the quality of vehicle used to deliver the packages, the type of time scale any good delivery service should have between the ordering of the package and its delivery and how the delivery service should interact with its customers. To be even more sure of where you stand, it may be a good idea to check your criteria against the things customers particularly like about popular companies and compare which companies the best to those that do the worst. This will help establish a series of rules that you can follow to help guide your writing and make it as impartial as possible. Once you have established your criteria it may be wise to write down some questions for the particular company that you are looking at and, evaluating the data you have on them, try to answer them. Once you answer the questions you will be able to tell how well the company is doing – this will give you some solid and reliable information to use when writing your essay.
- What do the company do? This is important because it helps keeps your line of inquiry focussed but also means that you aren’t attempting to compare it to other more successful companies in other fields – you are only comparing it to your criteria and other examples of companies in the same area as it.
- How much money do they make? Knowing and understanding a company’s overall turnover can help you assess how well they are doing and come to some conclusion about the state of their company. You may not be able to find out the exact figure for how much turnover the company makes but an estimate will do just as well. In other words, what is their next profit?
- How cost effective are they? This will further help in your analysis and ensure that you endeavour to be correct about the state of the company you are evaluating. The company may make a lot of money but if they aren’t cost effective then this could damage their standing and not help them be fully successful. You have to be certain of this particular aspect as it will help support your argument in your essay and ensure that it has strong evidence behind it.
- How do they compare to their competitors? This question is particularly important because it will help you evaluate the company in comparison to its competitors and fully understand where it stands in the market place it is operating in. Combined with these other questions this will allow you to make a clear and valid analysis of where the company stands.
