TOPIC:ARGUMENT 44 - The following is a recommendation from the
business manager of Monarch Books.
"Monarch Books should open a café in its store to attract more
customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened
a café. Monarch, which has been in business at the same location for
more than twenty years, has a large customer following because it is
known for its wide selection of books on all subjects. Opening the café
would clearly attract more customers. The café would require relatively
little space. Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the
children's book section, which will likely become less popular given that
the last national census indicated a significant decline in the percent of
the population who are under age ten.
In the recommendation, the manager adovocate building up a cafe by
discontiuing the children's book section, which could attract more
customers, as he claims. This argument seems very cogent ostensibly,
but an in-depth view would uncover its vulterabilities.
To begin with, the manager fails to provide more solid reasons why
opening a cafe could attract more customers. Do the local people are
fond of drinking coffee? just because the business opponent, Regal
Books opens a cafe then Monarch Books have to establish one? It is
ridiculous. What is more, the arguer fails to weighing the cost of building
a cafe over the potential profit increment incurred by more customers.
Without any more investigation into a cafe shop and more customers, the
recommendation is hardly believable.
Another flaw of the recommendation has to do with the consensus. The
national consensus, which indicates a significant decline of children
nationwide, does not necessarily result in the reduction of the local
children's population.
Even granted that the number of local children is decreasing, we still have
very good reason to doubt the adequacy of discontinuing the children's
section of the bookstore. As the manager has mentioned, the Monarch
Books is famous for its wide selection on all subjects. However, removing
the children's section would greatly ruin the book store's reputation and
even worse, render the local residents a utilitarian image of the book
store. Consequently, the customer would be decreasing rather than
increasing.
In short, this argument is unsolid from the foregoing discussions. To make
it more persuasive, the arguer ought to provide more evidence that the
cafe could incur more customers, and carefully weight the cost of setting
a cafe with the potential increment of the profit. Besides, the manager
needs to investigate the local children's and customers' ideas before
removing the children's section.