ARGUMENT 65 【CSMY作文互改小组】的三次作业

stevenhuUID: 172722

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."

1. Sales condition in newest store is not enough to present a overall situation.
2. The survey lacks background information.
3. Cutting off selling cheese won't improve the sales profit.

In the memo the arguer claimed cutting off stocking imported cheeses to further improve profits. To support this idea, the arguer revealed the fact that the most popular cheeses in its newest store are all domestic ones. The arguer also cited a survey to demonstrate the increasing preference of domestic cheese. Based on this mere survey and facts, the suggestion sounds plausible, but a close review will show that there are several fallacies in this memo.

Firstly, the sales condition in the newly opened store fails to convince us that the majority of people living in America prefer domestic cheeses. As indicated in the memo, this store is located in Wisconsin, a common state among America's all fifty states, therefore the sales condition in this store can at most demonstrate the preference of people living in Wisconsin. It is entirely possible that consumers in other states like cheeses from anywhere else but not domestic. Lacking the overall information about the sales condition in other stores, it is unsafe to believe most of the customers like domestic cheeses.

Secondly, the survey appeared in this memo also failed to persuade us to believe the customers of this chain stores prefer local made cheeses. According to this memo, the survey was held by Cheese of the World magazine and all of the respondents are its subscribers. It is reasonable to conclude that people who can afford to subscribe such a specialized magazine are most probably experts at cheese or fans enjoying it. However, this group of people may have different characters from the most common customers in consuming behavior and preference; therefore we can not directly derive common people's preference from this special group, and it is completely possible that only just this small group of people likes to have locally made cheeses, while the majority still likes cheese from Wisconsin.

Finally, even if it is a real trend for customers to choose domestic cheeses, stopping providing imported cheese would not guarantee a profit increase. As is known to all, profits are income minus cost. Though stopping stocking imported cheeses would decrease the cost of stores, because they may seldom be sold in other local stores, it is completely reasonable for stores to sell imported cheeses at a much higher price that the average profits gained from it is much higher than domestic ones. In this particular situation, the total profit would even decrease as a result of not selling these cheeses.

From the above analysis, the arguer failed to persuade us that stop providing imported cheeses would definitely improve the chain stores' profiting ability, since the memo fails to prove the majority of American customers really prefer domestic cheeses and profit will certainly rise if cutting off providing imported cheese. To make the memo really convincible, the arguer would at least provide sufficient information about the survey and give specific statistics to prove the profit rise by the arguer's suggestion.