ARGUMENT 7，新版第七题 习作
本帖最后由 wyb107@126.com 于 2012-3-3 13:33 编辑TOPIC: ARGUMENT7 - The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books.
"We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because it is known for its wide selection of books on all subjects. Clearly, opening the café would attract more customers. Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the children's book section, which will probably become less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten. Opening a café will allow Monarch to attract more customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened its own café."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered
The author recommends that Monarch Books(MB)
should turn its children's book section of its store into a cafe, in order to attract more consumers and better compete with Regal Books(RB) which just opened its own cafe. To support the recommendation, the author cites the recent national census which indicates that the percentage of children’ population has declined. However, the argument rests on a serious of dubious assumptions. To convince me, some important questions need to be answered.
First, the author assumes that the national census about the population of children could be equally applied to the town where MB locates in. Yet this might not be the case, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps, having more babies is the tradition in MB town, which make the percentage of children's population in MB town always higher than national averages. So even though the percentage of population of children around the country has declined, the percentage in MB town might remain the same, or be higher than before. Moreover, even if the percentage of children in MB town has also decreased, the absolute number of children might not decline since the total number of population has increased. Also, even if the population of children in MB town has declined, it does not necessarily mean that the children's book will become less popular. For example, the government of MB just began to take measures to encourage children to read, and allocated a fund to inspire writers to write books for children. Without ruling out these possibilities, the author can not justifiably conclude that the children book will be less popular.
Another assumption in this argument is that it assumes opening a cafe in a book store could attract more customers or could give the store more advantages in competition. But the author offers no evidences that this is the case. Based on the information that MB's well-known is due to its wide selection of book on all subjects, it is possible that turning the children book section into a cafe will not bring any benefits to the store, but will hurt loyal children book coustomers' feelings, which might sway them to the RB store. Also, the argument does not prove that RB is becoming more competitive because of its new cafe.
Thirdly, even if opening a cafe does bring RB more customers, it does not mean that adopting the same measure will bring MB the same effects. The author overlooks the differences between the location of MB and RB. Perhaps there is no cafe in RB's town, or the nearest cafe is too far from the store, which to great extent limited the number of customers to RB store. In such situation opening a cafe in RB is a wise decision. While in MB town, there might be a lot of cafes, and maybe the neighbor of MB store is Starbucks. As it stands, transforming children book section into a cafe will make no difference to MB store, except losing its advantages it already has--wide selection.
In conclusion, this argument is not well supported. To convince me, the author should provide more relevant information to substantiate all the assumptions.
页:
[1]