Argument117 [AeroAssgin10][GOLDENSTRIKE]

GoldenStrikeUID: 2437012

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."


The author concluded that their office-supply department will become most profitable if they increase the stock of office supplies, especially home office supplies. However, this statement appears unconvincing to me. Besides of the doubtful survey, the inference made between survey result and the unsatisfying sale in their office supply department is in need of more detailed investigation.

The argument begins with an survey result in which 70 percent of the respondents report they need to work more at home. It does not indicate how many people responded to their survey, nor did it point out where and to whom they performed the survey. It's a common phenomenon nowadays that in commercial surveys, few of the public would be willing to make a reply even if the company paid much effort to deliver its questionnaire. Also, the short paragraph presented above failed to clarify whether the survey was delivered upon its main customer group. If it's a quotation from other source which performed an investigation over employees in another continent, it would stand for little reference value. Considering all these reasons, this argument was in fact laying on an unstable foundation.

If we assume that the author has other sufficient evident to support his/her confidence about this survey, the inference between the trend of working at home and their unpleasing sale was still questionable. First, the statement of their office-supply department didn't raise their sale ended with a haste. The reason of such an situation was left unknown. More important, the facilities needed for working at home was in fact has no much difference with office-worker equipments. The examples mentioned in the argument: printers, small copy machines, paper shredders and fax machines, are definitely all usual facilities of any modern office, although they may be seen a little more at home, according to the author. In other words, even the trend of working at home is true, it does not and will not construct any factor which would let Mart increasing its sales only by change its product composing. The argument continues with an assertion that they would like to also increasing stocks of other goods like pens and papers, and this still raised a confusion that, as it's known that these office supplies is not selling well, why would Mart insist on increasing their stock, if not cut down them?

The argument presented was relied on an questionable survey result, followed by a misleading inference between the working-at home trend and Mart's strategy to increasing it's office supply sale. To make the argument more convincing, the author need to inform its reader with more details of the survey, and more important, to carefully clarify the reason of the stagnation of sales in Mart's office supply department, to evaluate the effect would be placed on it's marketing strategy by the trend of working at home, therefore plan a sound schedule of whether increasing stocks for office machines and other supplies.(489 WORDS)