Argument65 <米国有米小组aefiter第五次作业> 欢迎来拍

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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."


In order to convince us that the best way to raise the profits of this cheese store is to terminate the sales of imported cheese so that the cost of a wide inventory could be saved, the arguer presents an apparently reasonable reasoning. Both the high popularity among magazine subscribers for domestic cheeses, and the new record that show a high performance for domestic cheeses in Wisconsin chain stores help support this argument. Yet, the provided information cannot rule out other possibilities that equally corroborate to the provided information, and these possibilities go against to the suggestion come up with in the ending of the argument.

The arguer firstly states the truth that best-selling cheeses in newly opened stores are domestic ones. However, if we further the result, we can arrive at many circumstances that are helpless to support the idea that domestic cheese are most profitable. Maybe the sum of domestic cheese that sold in Wisconsin are not more than the imported cheese, and the five best brands of cheese can only occupy a very little of all the cheese sold in Wisconsin chain store. Moreover, we cannot say the domestic cheese will be more profitable than imported ones. Perhaps imported cheese, although with a lower amount of sale and a narrower scope of consumers, the space for the profit combined with the amount of sale, result to a relatively higher profit than domestic cheeses.

As to another evidence provided in the argument, problems exists equally. The Cheeses of the World magazine, mentioned in the argument, may be a very influential magazine which are subscribed by almost all cheese consumers so as to indicate a convincing statistics of the ideas of consumers, as is assumed by the arguer. Unfortunately, the arguer cannot identify the assumption that is very crucial for its reasoning. As a result, it is entirely possible that survey operated by this magazine cannot reflect the true viewpoint of consumers of cheeses in the country. Hence, the information provided by this survey can also be distorted by the unrepresentative statistics.

Based on the reasoning, the arguer arrive at the conclusion that all of our stores should discontinue stocking many imported cheeses. But this conclusion rely heavily on another premise: the Wisconsin cheese store can represent the sale status in all the stores scattered all over the country. However, if Wisconsin residents are especially accustomed to consume very large amount of cheese than other state of the country, other states may very likely have a different preference compared with Wisconsin state residents.

In the final analysis, we cannot accept the argumentation without convincing and supportive evidence for the several premises relied by the argument. In order to bolster the reasoning, the arguer can give evidence indicating Wisconsin state are representative at the residents' preference of cheeses; and the domestic cheese will be really more profitable than imported cheeses.