argument217

alickenUID: 2845947

1010G欢迎拍文 7.24作业


TOPIC: ARGUMENT217 - The following appeared in a brochure promoting the purchase of local franchises for a national chain of gyms.

"Now is the time to invest in a Power-Lift Gym franchise so that you can profit from opening one of our gyms in your town. Consider the current trends: Power-Lift Gyms are already popular among customers in 500 locations, and national surveys indicate increasing concern with weight loss and physical fitness. Furthermore, last year's sales of books and magazines on personal health totaled more than $50 million, and purchases of home exercise equipment almost doubled. Investing now in a Power-Lift Gym franchise will guarantee a quick profit."
WORDS: 431
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010-7-24 18:05:58

In this argument, the writer proposes that to invest a Power-Lift Gym(PLG) franchise one can get profits quickly. To support his suggestion, the writer cites some evidences to prove it, like PLG are already popular in many locations and surveys indicate people concern weight loss. He also says that people by more exercise equipments than before. However, these evidences cannot support the writer's suggestion well and the argument suffers some logical flaws.

First, through it is true that PLG have been popular among customers in 500 locations, the writer gives us a vague word 'location'. If it means 500 small place such as 500 blocks, then actually PLG is not so popular as the writer says, because there are only limited people lives in one block, that is, even if all the residents in this block go to buy sports equipments, the total sell amount is very small. On the contrary, if 'location' here means large places like cities or towns, the person who will invest PLG may not get high profit either. We know that 500 cities is not a small amount that the total amount of cities in one nation may no more than this. That is to say, PLG already have brunches in almost all the cities. Image, if a person opens a new PLG store in these cities, this practice may affect the original PLG store here, and to get more customers, competitions may raise so that profits may decline.

Second, the survey mentioned in the argument only illustrate people are increasingly concern about their health. They may have some exercise to loss weight, but neither they have willing nor needs to buy exercise equipments. It is entirely possible that they just jumping and running in blocks. Also, there is no evidence indicate that citizens will buy exercise equipments from PLG stores. Maybe, these equipments in PLG was too expensive or not suitable people's demanding. So many uncertainties in this argument that the suggestion may not worth to be adopted.

Finally, throughout the argument I can not find any information about the invest price and profits which is the most significant information that investor concerned. It is clearly every investment has risks and headstrong investors will have their own ideas about this investment, not drove by the writer. So the writer should give us comprehensive information about price, profits and the most important one the invest risk.

In sum, the meaning of the word 'location' in this argument should be defined clearly. And the argument misses some key information that makes the suggestion of the writer ungrounded.