Argument65 【loveaw】 第十一次作业

njuliuyangUID: 2300567

TOPIC: ARGUMENT65 - 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."
WORDS: 380(350)          TIME: 0:32:46(0:30:00)          DATE: 2007-2-24
一、新店的情况不代表全部店
二、survey可疑
三、未提供information on costs and prices，无法比较profits

The author comes to the conclusion based on the precarious assumption that customers tend to purchase domestic cheeses rather than imported ones, which renders the conclusion unsound as it stands.

To begin with, the mere fact that the five best-selling cheeses at their newest store were all domestic cheeses does not necessarily infer that domestic cheeses at all of their stores were popular with customers. Perhaps the newest store was located in Wisconsin where local people prefer domestic cheddar cheeses to imported cheeses. In addition, the author provides no information concerning the promotion of the newest store. It is entirely possible that the newest store carried out a large campaign of promotion which promoted the domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin and thus the sales of them were higher than the others.

Moreover, the author fails to lend strong support to the credibility of the survey cited in the argument. There is a good chance that the survey designed was somewhat misleading so that the respondents have to choose domestic cheeses as their favorites. For example, the survey simply provided limited choices including several best-selling domestic cheeses and many imported cheeses that are not popular with consumers at all. As a consequence, the respondents were likely to choose those best-selling domestic cheeses instead of those imported ones. Besides, the author provides no detailed information on the subscribers. Perhaps the number of subscribers was too small to reflect the general attitudes of overall consumers. Or perhaps the majority of the subscribers were the manufacturers of domestic cheeses who naturally preferred them to imported cheese.

Another problem with the conclusion is whether discontinuing stocking many of various imported cheese and focus on domestic cheeses will improve profits in all of their stores. The author fails to provide information on the costs and prices of domestic cheeses and imported cheese, which prevent us from making a comparison between the profits of them. Perhaps the production costs of domestic cheeses are so high that the profits of them are not relatively high compared with those of imported ones.

In sum, the author lends little support to the conclusion. To better bolster it, it would be of use to provide more detailed information on the subscribers, profits of domestic cheeses and imported ones.