argument65 April小组 第二周作业

xxstarUID: 2442018

65.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."



The argument draws the conclusion that by concentrating more on domestic cheese will improve the profit of all stores on two facts. Firstly, the domestic was more popular than imported cheese in newly five stores. Secondly, the result of one survey in World magazine shows that its subscribers prefer more on domestic cheese. However, these two facts will not necessary come to the whole conclusion yet.

First of all, it is hard to convince people that only through the condition on five new setting-up stores could represent it in whole stores. We haven’t seen any further figures or other information that could make us believe that in other stores in the chain, the domestic cheeses is also much popular than imported cheese. In fact, there may be many reasons that increase the sell volume of domestic cheese, such as the selling promotes, or the new stores just put more human resources and financial resources on the advertisement of domestic cheese. Both these will make domestic cheese more appealing to customers, thus comes with the improvement in selling condition.

Secondly, the result inducted by the survey of World magazine only appropriate for its subscribers, which is only part of the whole customers, and we could not know how much the subscriber will represent the whole customers from the argument also. Maybe the one who buy the World magazine is mainly consists of food engineers in cheese production that are really interest in domestic cheese. What’s more, we should be also very careful about the situation that subscribers who have preference for imported cheese may reported to the survey in less probability, which will also mask the real fact behind the survey.

Thirdly, even the two facts that the argument states did reflect the true situation of whole stores and whole customer; we also could not come to the assertion that by reducing the storage of imported cheese and have more domestic cheese on the stock will bring more profit. Economists always describe profit as income revenue after considering the costs paid before. On one side, the increasing volume in cheese selling will bring more income assuming that the price is stable, however, the cost spent in storing and selling these cheese may also increase during these process. For example, the additional promotion cost and employee salary will all reduce the profit by bringing on more cost comparing with the limited revenue growth. On the other side, if the purchase power of the whole customer is infinite, considering the complement relation between imported cheese and domestic cheese, the increasing volume on domestic cheese sold will definitely bring down the volume on imported cheese sold. If the increased revenue on domestic cheese can not leverage the lost on imported cheese, the total profit will decrease in the end.

In sum, the conclusion in the argument was made with over optimism without considering the whole situation; it could not supply enough information in either figures or depiction. To supporting the conclusion, the author needs more evidence.

[ 本帖最后由 xxstar 于 2008-3-27 10:53 编辑 ]

soulsurvivorUID: 2412280

1 more human resources and financial resources 可以改为 more human and financial resources
2 only appropriate for its subscribers 之前应该加 is
3 第二段开头的结构略显繁冗。
4 Maybe the one who buy the World magazine is mainly consists of food engineers  前后单复数不统一，consist of 是及物动词词组，不需要再加 be 动词。
5 第四段开头又用了过去时， 时态不统一。
6 complement relation 是什么意思？如果表示互补关系， 没有这个词组。
文章思路不错，但语言需要多加注意。第四段逻辑说得很好，但如果语言稍加改进会更好。