Argument15， 第一次模考文章，路还很长~

shadow1987UID: 2605840

TOPIC: ARGUMENT15 - The following appeared in a newsletter offering advice to investors.

"Over 80 percent of the respondents to a recent survey indicated a desire to reduce their intake of foods containing fats and cholesterol, and today low-fat products abound in many food stores. Since many of the food products currently marketed by Old Dairy Industries are high in fat and cholesterol, the company's sales are likely to diminish greatly and their profits will no doubt decrease. We therefore advise Old Dairy stockholders to sell their shares and other investors not to purchase stock in this company."
WORDS: 340
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010-7-31 21:34:48

In this argument, the author recommends that Old Dairy (OD) stockholders should sell their shares, and meanwhile, the other investors should not buy this company's stock. To bolster his conclusion, the author addresses his assumption that the OD Company’s sales will diminish remarkably, and their profits will consequently decrease. The author also cites the survey which was conducted recently, according to this survey, over 80 percent respondents desire to reduce their intake of foods containing fats and cholesterol. Another fact is that nowadays many low-fat products flood many food stores. The author also point out the fact that many of OD's productions contain high rate of fat and cholesterol. However, I find this recommendation dubious on several grounds.

In the first place, the mere fact that over 80 percent of respondents of this survey desire to decrease the amount of high-fat food in their daily lives does not necessarily means the OD's sales will be influenced. Perhaps, even known the high-fat foods are unhealthy, these people cannot just control themselves stop buying them because of these foods are incredible delicious. Given that they will buy these foods as well, OD’s sales obviously would not decrease. For another thing, the author fails to give the total quantity of these survey's respondents and the further information about them. Perhaps, the amount of participators is extremely few, and their behaviors might not affect the OD' sales. Or perhaps they live in countryside and it is difficult to buy the OD’s products frequently, therefore whether they reduce the intake of high-fat foods or not, they would not buy OD’s products as usual, and In this way, OD’ sales will not decrease as well. With ruling out all other possible scenarios, the author simply cannot convince me.

Additionally, the author said low-fat products abound in many food stores nowadays and he assumes that people would but these products instead of those high-fat products and therefore, the OD's sales will decrease. Yet, there seems no sufficient evidence to substantiate this assumption because the author fails to provide further investigation. Perhaps these low-fat foods do not taste good and people dislike buying them. Or perhaps, OD Company’s president was aware of the tendency that people are tend to eat low-fat food and place more emphasis on health, so the president change the production design and follow the tendency to product low-fat foods aside of high-fat foods. Consequently, those low-fat foods in the local stores are also produced by OD Company, no matter people choose what kind of food, and the OD Company will benefit from the purchasing. In this way, to make his assumption more reliable, the author should provide more evidences.

Moreover, even assuming that the OD Company’s sales will decrease, the author suggests that the stockholders of this OD ought to sell their shares and at the same time, the other investors should not purchase OD’ stocks. However, the author fails to consider the aftermath that if the investors refuse to purchase OD’s stocks, how its stockholders sell them at the same time? What a paradoxical suggestion, and as the result, the real losers might be the stockholders and investors themselves. In my view, the author’s recommendation falls short on its persuasiveness.

To sum up, the author's conclusion is based on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions which renders the conclusion unconvincing as it stands. In order to have a more persuasive suggestion, the author should reappraise the survey comprehensively and then conducts a statistics about the OD’s market share and their products list. After take all factors into consideration, the suggestion might be more convincing.