ARGUMENT171 by zephyrqq

zephyrqqUID: 2260290

ARGUMENT171 - The following appeared in a memo from the marketing director of Bargain Brand Cereals.
"One year ago we introduced our first product, 'Bargain Brand' breakfast cereal. Our very low prices quickly drew many customers away from the top-selling cereal companies. Although the companies producing the top brands have since tried to compete with us by lowering their prices, and although several plan to introduce their own budget brands, not once have we needed to raise our prices to continue making a profit. Given our success selling cereal, Bargain Brand should now expand its business and begin marketing other low-priced food products as quickly as possible."
字数：450        用时：00:40:00          日期：2008-2-24 16:46:32

1. 去年的低价不一定导致受欢迎
2.受欢迎不代表能够盈利
3.即使去年成功了，在其他公司也降价的情况下，竞争不一定能够取胜，而且新产品能否成功很难说


Before accepting the author's recommendation that Bargain Brand should expend its business and begin marketing other low-price products soon to make profit, we should make a reflection on the reasons given by the author once again. This Argument commits some logic fallacies for the following reasons.

To begin with, the author's claim that their low price quickly drew many customers away from top-selling cereal company lend little support to the author's suggestion. First, the word "many" is too vague to be informative, we do not know whether the number of these kind of customs is large significantly enough to ensure that Bargain Brand could enjoy a sufficient share of cereal market. Secondly, the author unfairly assume that price is the only factor that influence the preference of customers. However, this is often not the case, of course. There other factors which might also contribute significantly to the popularity of a kind of food. For instance, the brands of the product, the quality and taste of food. Without taking all of these causes into account, the company could not achieve their success by merely bringing down the price of their product.

Furthermore, even if the low price make Bargain Brand become popular among target customs, there is no guarantee that it could gain any profits. Common sense tells us that, profits depend on the revenues and expenses. It is possible that Bargain Brand set their price so low that their income could not make up their expenses, including producing costs, transporting costs, the wages of  its workers, taxes and so forth.  Without ruling out this possibility and other relevant evidence, the author could not convince us that they gained a joyful profits by offer their first product with a very low price.

In addition,  even if its popularity and high profits of last year was true, other companies also began to low the price of their product, and the author fails to convince us that under this situation Bargain Brand could continue be popular in the future. It is entirely possible Bargain Brand would suffer failure in the competition with the top brands. Moreover, even if its breakfast cereal could enjoy success, this fact do little to support that other low-priced food products would bring about the same favorable result. Because it is difficult to make sure that new products will be liked by costumers, and they simply have no experience in marketing these products.


For all these foregoing reasons, this argument is unsubstantial as it stands. To better evaluate it, we need more information about whether Bargain Brand could continue enjoy a considerable share of food market or not and whether it could gain any profits by lowing their price.

[ 本帖最后由 zephyrqq 于 2008-3-6 19:08 编辑 ]

OB叔UID: 188695

good article

zephyrqqUID: 2260290

Thank you~