argument1,备战第一篇，求赐教

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题目
ARGUMENT1 - The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Nature's Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.
"Previous experience has shown that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build our next new store in Plainsville, which has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville's schoolchildren are required to participate in a 'fitness for life' program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age."
习作
In the letter, the vice president of Nature's Way (NW) recommends that NW open their next store in Plainsville (P). To substantiate this suggestion, s/he cites a report showing that citizens in Plainsville are greatly concerned with their good health and employs previous experience to justify that they would buy NW’s products. Additional evidence provided to validate the recommendation is that s/he supposes that students participating in a 'fitness for life' program would be potential consumers of Nw's products. While seeming to be plausible, the recommendation is actually ill-reasoned with close scrutiny.

First of all, to authenticate the argument, the vice president makes an assumption that most residents in P focus greatly on health issues based on P merchants report. But s/he doesn't provide any evidence on the accuracy of the report. There is a possibility that the report turns out to be against facts with or without intention. It is as likely that Merchants administered false information in order to confuse their competitors. If so, it will be inevitably a disaster to follow the advice.

Given that the report does reflect the reality, it still does not necessarily mean that local people care about health. The vice president fails to take into account that possibility that high sales of sport apparel result from its low price or that sportswear is fashionable in P. Also running shoes and exercise clothing are probably mainly sold to foreigners who travel to P, and if that is the case, sale records tell nothing about local people's perspective towards good health . Moreover, the report displays no information about the population in P and the size of the health club. Albeit club members have increased and more people are taking weight training and aerobics classes, they might just compose a small portion of the total population. All these stated factors undermine the effectiveness of the report.

Even I concede that residents in P show caring for healthy lives, NW is probably unable to attract enough buyers, let alone make a profit. The vice president quotes empirical experience showing that stores were very profitable in regions dwelled by citizens concerned with living healthy lives. However the arguer overlooks factors that make the case in P aberrant from previous experience. Residents may hold the opinion that they can lead healthy lives by participating in exercise instead of purchasing health food or other related products or competitors of NW may have already captured the market. Either scenario, if true, will make the new store fail to survive. Even assuming that many would buy NW's products, the store won't be profitable because profit is determined by both sales and costs. The rent and labor cost in P can be so high that costs surpasses sales. All these considerations suggest it is unwise to build a new store in P.
Finally, it takes a long time for schoolchildren who take part in the program to be able to make their own decision on whether consuming health-related commodities or not. Common sense tells that youngsters will be prone to act against what they are compelled to do when they grow up. Moreover, when growing older, schoolchildren are likely to move out to bigger cities for better chances. Without considering and ruling out all these and other possibilities, the program won’t help create potential customers for NW.
In sum, to better evaluate the vice president's recommendation further and detailed information is needed. Unless the company is able to control costs and knows for sure that dwellers in P are willing to purchase products from NW other than other stores, it is arbitrary to invest a next store in P.