[未归类] argument65 [SJTU-ETB6 10G]第六次作业 [复制链接]

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发表于 2007-8-6 18:27:13 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

TOPIC: ARGUMENT65 - The following appeared in a memo from the president of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States.

"For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however, the five best-selling cheeses at our newest store were all domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, a recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company can reduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in all of our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."
WORDS: 439 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2007-8-6 16:39:04

The author claims that in order to improve profits in all of the stores and reduce the expense, the chain store should discontinue stocking many of the variety of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses. In the process of supporting his conclusion, I find that the author apparently commit some logical fallacies.

Firstly, the argument relies on the assumption that the good selling of domestic cheese at the newest store is attributable to the fact that people prefer domestic cheese to imported one. Yet, this is unwarranted. As we all know, when a new store opens, a series of advertising campaign will be brought on. Maybe the newest store chose the domestic cheese for advertising by decreasing the price of domestic cheese to an attractable level for customers so that the domestic cheese was well sold. It is equally possible that the newest store located in the state of Wisconsin where people tend to buy the cheeses produced in their own state. But this is necessarily case throughout the whole United States. Unless the author could provide more information to rule out these possibilities, I am not convinced of the conclusion.

Secondly, whether the survey cited in the argument is credible remains a question. We are not informed how many participants take part in this survey and whether the respondents of the survey are representative to the whole customer in the country and the like. Even assuming that the survey is reliable, the increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers doesn’t necessarily mean that they prefer the domestic cheeses to the imported ones. Perhaps the subscribers didn't like the domestic cheeses at all in the past and even though the favor of domestic cheeses has increased, the preference of the imported cheeses has never declined.

Thirdly, the assumption that reducing the stocking of imported cheeses will improve profits needs further evidence since the profits are related to many factors. Maybe most customers still prefer imported cheeses to domestic cheeses, simply reducing the stocking of the imported cheeses would undoubtedly cause the complaints from customers. Thus, fewer and fewer people would buy the cheeses in the chain stores. This would certainly lead to the decline in selling. And cutting down the imported cheeses may raise the cost because it is highly possible that the imported cheeses from some developing countries such as China where the labor resource is affluent are much cheaper than the domestic cheeses. On the contrary, the profits may decrease significantly.

To sum up, the conclusion reached in this argument is not persuasive because the author fails to provide enough cogent evidence to support it.