【challenge yourself小组】第六次作业 argument14

superjiang001UID：2300426

ARGUMENT 14
.The following appeared in a memo from the owner of Green Thumb Gardening Center, a small business serving a suburban town.
"There is evidence that consumers are becoming more and more interested in growing their own vegetables. A national survey conducted last month indicated that many consumers were dissatisfied with the quality of fresh vegetables available in supermarkets. And locally, the gardening magazine Great Gardens has sold out at the Village News stand three months in a row. Thus, we at Green Thumb Gardening Center can increase our profits by greatly expanding the variety of vegetable seeds we stock for gardeners this coming spring."

提纲：
第一反驳段：没有证据表明扩大种子的储量会增加利润
第二反驳段：光靠study提供的两个现象不能证明消费者变得对自己种蔬菜有兴趣了
第三反驳段：study本身不准确

In this argument, the researchers who conducted the consumer study seem to have assumed that the consumers's dissatisfaction with the quality of fresh vegetables available in supermarkets and the increasingly sales volume of the gardening magazine lead to the assertion that consumers are becoming more and more interested in growing their own vegetables, which may mask other factors which are potentially more significant and may inspire the Green Thumb Gardening Center to over invest financially in stocking vegetable seeds.

First of all, there is absolutely no evidence provided that expanding the variety of vegetable seeds for stock will increase the profits of Green Thumb Gardening Center. We have no specific information about the number and preference of the residents, the price of the vegetable seeds, and so forth. Other possibilities to consider is this: perhaps the price of most of the vegetable seeds is so low that the center has a limited opportunity to gain much profit from it even they can sell all the seeds they stock. In addition, perhaps the residents of the suburban town prefer to eat only a small kinds of vegetables, and thus unpopular vegetable seeds will be remain left in the owner’s hands—which also can not guarantee the increasing of profits. Moreover, maybe the number of consumers who are interested in growing vegetables themselves is so small, thus they lack of the competence to form strong purchasing force. To substantiate his argument, the author should provide more specific information showing that there is cause-and-effect relationship between expanding the variety of vegetable seeds the center stock and the increase of profits.

Secondly, we can not assume that consumers are becoming more and more interested in growing their own vegetable simply by their dissatisfaction with the quality of fresh vegetables available in supermarkets and the increasingly sales of gardening magazine Great Gardens. In fact, some other possibilities should be taken into consideration. On one hand, compare to the dissatisfied with the quality of fresh vegetables in the supermarkets, the consumer maybe more reluctant to grow vegetables themselves, for it will waste their precious leisure time on buying fertilizer, selecting well qualified seeds, and so on so forth. On the other hand, the good sales of gardening magazine Great Gardens maybe have greatly paid tribute to other people, say, some graduates who came to make a investigation towards their careers, but rather the consumers. Moreover, maybe the gardening magazine has long been sold well, and it just sold out recently, which can not explain anything. Unless the author can offer more proper evidence, I can not agree with the speaker’s claim.

Finally, the national survey is not accurate itself. How to define many? Is that means 90 percent of the total number of consumers or just a small percentage of them which is still a large number? In addition, the extent to how dissatisfied are the consumers with the quality of fresh vegetables in supermarkets? Maybe they do have a feeling that the vegetables are not as fresh as before, but they can still tolerate and more importantly they will still buy them. What is more, what is the survey cycle of the study? If they conclude the consequence just by one day’s investigation, I suppose it make nonsense even ridiculous for maybe the lack of fresh vegetables that day is due to some special reasons, say, there is torrential rain that day, and most of the vegetables available is the inventory of yesterday. In the above study, we know nothing about the relative information.

In sum, before the conclusion that we should greatly expand the variety of vegetable seeds we stock for gardeners this coming spring is reached, a more strictly controlled legitimate study is needed.

[ 本帖最后由 superjiang001 于 2008-8-5 11:38 编辑 ]