[未归类] argument117 【OB小组】第8次作业 [复制链接]

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发表于 2007-7-22 20:43:32 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

TOPIC: ARGUMENT117 - The following is a memo from the business manager of Valu-Mart stores.

"Over 70 percent of the respondents to a recent survey reported that they are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. Since Valu-Mart has not seen impressive sales in its office-supply departments in the past, we should take advantage of this work-at-home trend by increasing at all Valu-Mart stores the stock of home office machines such as printers, small copy machines, paper shredders, and fax machines. We will also increase stock of office supplies such as paper, pens, and staplers. With these changes, our office-supply departments will become the most profitable component of our stores."
WORDS: 541 TIME: 00:29:15+10 DATE: 2007-7-22 20:24:04

In this argument, the arguer makes the recommendation of increasing stock of the home office machines like printer, small machines and etc as well as office suppliers such as paper, pens and staplers. The suggestion is based on a recent survey demonstrating more than 70 percent of the respondents are required to take extra work home from the workplace. The arguer thinks this trend will bring the impressive incoming in the office-supply departments and make them most profitable component of their stores. However, this argument can not stand further scrutiny at all and suffers from several critical flaws.

First of all, the arguer provides little information about the survey. Thus, the deduction based on the groundless survey is unreliable. For instance, the respondents of the survey can be the employees in some major companies in this area. In that case, the demanding of other consumers of home office machines and office supplies is missed out, causing the information collected by the survey incomplete.

Furthermore, even the survey is scientific and its data are credible, the mere survey can not lend strong support to the arguer's conjecture that the sales of home office machines and office supplies will increase accordingly. The survey just reveals the fact people now have to take more work home from workplace, which does not necessarily means they will need more home office machines and office supplies. There is huge chance that those works are mainly the jobs that can be done by computer such as writing an article, arranging meeting agenda, calculating statistics and so forth. Therefore, the sales of home office machines and office supplies will not increase with this trend. In sum, the arguer is too hasty to decide the work-at-home trend will bring sales of the office supplies and home machines without any careful analysis.

Finally, even if there is such trend of purchasing home office machines and office supplies, the arguer arbitrarily draws the conclusion to increase the stock of them is a feasible plan and the office-supply departments will thus become the most profitable component of their stores. It is highly possible that such trend is just temporary, whereas stocking the home office machines and office supplies can harm the interests of their stores once the trend is quickly gone. Meanwhile, it is in all likelihood that the margin of home office machines and office supplies isn’t quite rich comparing to other products. Thus, spending a large amount of capitals on stocking the office products may bring limited interests, being unable to ensure the office-supply departments most profitable. However, investigating the capital on some other high-interests products may bring much more margin instead. To summarize, the arguer can not convince to stock office-supplies and home office machines can make the office-supplies department lucrative component of their stores without taking into account of other factors and alternatives.

In conclusion, the argument is not persuasive as it stands. To make it more convincing, the arguer needs to offer more evidence and information to prove there is indeed a trend of purchasing home-office machines and office supplies. Also, s/he has to collect more data to support the points that the interests of selling those products overweigh that of other products in a relatively long term.

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