argument117 [jet小组]第九次作业

michaelxuywUID: 2330197

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."

字数：484                    日期：2008-2-21

The manager of Valu-Mart stores, aiming at increasing the profit of their office-supply departments, suggests that they should increase their stock of home office machines and supplies so as to take advantage of an apparent work-at-home trend. In my opinion, however, this suggestion is far from reasonable because its fallacies lies in its reasoning.

Firstly, the manager believes that the increasing amount of work which people have to finish at home equates an increasing need for office supply, nonetheless, this is not necessarily the case. There are a lot of works which can be done without using office machines such as printers and copy machines. For example, an accountant can finish his or her extra calculation work by using a calculator, a computer programmer is able to complete the unfinished work on a computer nearly without using any other stationary, and the extra work for a researcher may be some papers to read. Also, thestationery such as pen and pens needed by the works mentioned before are likely to be already suffice at home. Therefore, until the manager provides supporting evidence which show a distinct desire of purchasing new office products by these respondents, we can not be totally assured that the sales will be improved.

Secondly, the manager's suggestion is based on an unsubstantiated premise that the lack of need of office supplies led to the mediocre sales performance, nonetheless, there are many other important factors which could be decisive to the performance of sales. Perhaps,  the quality of office products sold at Valu-Mart is not good as those sold in other stores, or, maybe, the prices of the products there are higher, or the services provided at office supply departments are poor. Hence, by merely increasing the stock of office supplies, the sales are not likely to improve. To make it convincing, the manager should provide further evidence to show that other factors didn't play a role in blocking the sales.

Moreover, the manager's decision to apply this stock-increasing policy to all Valu-Mart stores seems hasty, even if the decision appears to be beneficial. Without knowing the distribution of the respondents to the survey, we are inclined to suspect whether these responders are fully representative of all office works across the country. Perhaps, the survey was conducted only in a relevant small region and the work-at-home trend doesn't emerge at other regions of the country, hence, increasing stock of office supplies at those places will be meaningless.

In sum, this suggestion is well presented, but not thoroughly reasoned. The credibility of this suggestion is compromised by the manager's unsubstantiated reasoning and overlooking of other possible reasons of unimpressive sales performance in the past. To make it reasonable, the manger should provide evidence such as distribution and the types of works of the respondents, which could be helpful to determine a potential profits gain in the future after the suggestion is taken.