argument117 12月高强组周五作业

sunnie_518UID: 2136235

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: 558          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2006-12-22
提纲: survey 不一定可靠
      2 回去的工作量加大不等与对办公设备的需求增加
      3 提高库存和增加家用办公设备不一定是利润增加,更不能保证是最赚钱的
In this argument, the speaker concludes that by increasing the stock of home office machines such as printers small copy machines, paper shredders and stock of office supplies such as paper, pens, and staplers at all Valu-Mart stores, their office-supply department will become the most profitable component of their stores. To justify his recommendation, the speaker cites a recent survey of which over 70 percent of the respondents reported that they are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. A close examination of this argument would reveal how groundless his conclusion is.

To begin with, the survey provided upon which the argument relies is too vague to be informative. There is on concrete information about how this survey has been conducted. How many respondents are in this survey? Are they selected randomly? What are their ages, jobs and sexes? It is also possible that all these respondents are taking arduous jobs under heavy pressures and just make complaints about their jobs. Without necessary information, we can find no sign of random sampling and have good reasons to doubt whether these respondents are representative enough to reflect the general attitudes of all people as a whole. Therefore, the assumption that people are more prone to work at home than before is unwarranted.

Granted this woke-at-home trend is increasing, there is no evidence to show that the demand of home office machines and office supplies will correspondingly increase. Common senses tell us that all these machines are equipped in people's offices and seldom could they use these machines at home and few of them will purchase these machines. There are also no evidences to show that people are short of ordinary office supplies such as pens, paper or stapler. It is highly possible that they still have lots of these things at home which can use for a long time. It is also probable that most works taken home are just concerning process of files which can be accomplished on computers easily. In a whole, lacking of convincing evidences about the real demand about home office issues, it is unreasonable to recommend stores to increase their home office supplies.

Finally, the speaker makes a presumptuous conclusion that by adopting his recommendations, their office-supply departments will become the most profitable component of their stores. The speaker fails to analyze the actual reasons regarding the stagnant sale in Valu-Mart stores. What if  the primary causes accounting for their depressed sales are poor management, unsatisfactory after-sale service, products of poor quality and out-of-date style, even if the demand of home office supplies are increasing, sales volumes of their office-supply departments would not probably gain expected growth. Assuming sales of office-supply departments can increase, there is no guarantee that they will become the most profitable department in their stores. We can not rule out the possibility that other departments have adopted some measures to improve their revenue such as introducing new products, enlarging advertising campaign which would promote their sales and profits greater than those of office-supply department. As result of that, unless the speaker can provide more relevant information, we can not assess the reliability of his recommendation.

In summary, since the author commits the above mentioned logical mistakes and fails to consider the whole situation comprehensively, his recommendation should not be adopted.