Argument117 ［中华龙小组第六次作业，请大家批判］

Ammmy2000UID: 2265680

Argument 117

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."

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1. To begin with, the validity of survey is doubtful.
2. The arguer assumes that those who work at home need the home office machines and office supplies.
3. The manager neglects other factors to influence the profits of office-supply departments.
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In this memo, the manager recommends that we should increase the stock of home office machines and office supplies at all Valu-Mart stores. To support his conclusion, he cites a resent survey that most of the respondents say that they are requested to take more work at home. Moreover, he points out such action will increase profits in office-supply departments. As it stands, the argument suffers from several critical flaws as follows.

To begin with, the validity of survey is doubtful in two respects. First, lacking information about the number of people surveyed and the number of respondents, it is just as likely that only 50 persons responded while 500 individuals were surveyed. Second, we are not informed about the age groups and the occupations of the people. Absent such information, perhaps the age of respondents focus on a certain group but others are seldom required to work at home, or perhaps certain kind of occupation such as technicians needs the extra works while others don't need. Only ruling out such possibilities, can we believe that the survey is persuasive and credible.

In addition, assumption that those who work at home need the home office machines and office supplies helps the manager to conclude that we should increase the stock at all Valu-Mart. But the manager fails to provide any evidence to substantiate his assumption. It is possible that people working at home use E-mail or Microsoft Word to write documents or send messages and there is no need for them to buy any extra machines or papers. To better convince us, the author should supply the information about the necessity of the increasing stock.

Moreover, the manager neglects other factors influencing the profits of office-supply departments. Such factors, as economy environment, costs of the office-supply transportation, and the price of machines may greatly affect the profits. Maybe the price in Valu-Mart stores is much higher than in other stores, maybe the costs of transportation increase rapidly due to the shortage of vehicles, or maybe the economy is in recession that individuals have little extra money to buy office machines. Overlooking such possibilities probably influencing the profits, how can the manager make a confident conclusion that only increasing the stock in stores could bring more profits?

In summary, the argument is not persuasive as it stands. To make it more convincing, the manager should provide more information about the validity of the survey and factors affecting the profits of office-supply departments. To better evaluate the recommendation, we would need more evidence regarding the cause-and-effect relationship between working at home and buying home-office machines and supplies.  

xbullfrogUID: 2180016

语言上面我不能给出什么建设性意见了,可能刚才给你改ISSUE把我能量耗完了吧,嘿嘿

觉得你这篇ARG不是那么有力,觉得有点怪,

我老觉得调查这种错误不是主要的,不能放在第一位

可能也是我能量耗完了的原因吧:)

我想给下我的提纲大家一起讨论一下

1．  我们公司是否能够借助这个趋势来达到实现我们销量增长的目的？
        1．  我们抓住了这次趋势，我们就能得到好的销量吗？目前的市场饱和度怎么样？竞争激烈吗等问题都没有排除，如果贸然进军这个市场，我们很可能会损失
        2．  也许我们公司体制内有问题，比如销售人员不行，商店服务不好，公司整个的管理体制有问题等，不解决这些问题，我们即时抓住了这次趋势，我们的销量也不可能变好，甚至变得更差。商品的囤积
        3．  我们代理的品牌怎么样
2．  我们能够借助增加存货来提高我们的销量吗？没有任何证据表明我们的存货量不够，我们应该更仔细考虑如何抓住，不然我们也会亏。
3．  报告的有效性：
       1．  报告产生的地区是不是我们销售范围内地区？多少人参加？他们具不具备代表性？他们的工作都是什么类型的？
4．  为什么我们一定要增加纸张等的存货？有证据表明他们的需求在增长吗？

即时上述都满足，这个部门能成为我们对有利润的部门吗？利润涉及到成本和获得

  

   

同理,有问题要讨论,QQ,Email,或电话

[ 本帖最后由 xbullfrog 于 2006-12-3 16:25 编辑 ]