Argument14 by thanatos111 未限时

thanatos111UID: 2695845

题目：ARGUMENT14 - 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：
1：调查在全国，主要集中在大城市，而该地为郊区，发城市人主要依赖超市，而郊区人则不一定。
2：该杂志热销不能说明人们愿意自己种植物 因为：1，报摊减少了该杂志的量，使得杂志售空；2，杂志主要是说别的，如花卉种植，花园建设与管理，而与种植蔬菜无关。
3：有这些证据不足以说明对超市蔬菜不满的热播会自己种，还可以从杂货店和专门的蔬菜市场买到。

In this memo, the author comes to a conclusion that the Green Thumb Gardening Center(GC) can increase its profits by expanding the stock of various vegetable seeds, citing from a national survey indicating an increasing dissatisfaction with the quality of vegetables in supermarkets and the hot sell of a certain gardening magazine. But I consider the author's conclusion to be weak for several reasons.

To begin with, by resting on this national survey the author concludes with an assumption that the level of satisfaction locally with vegetables in supermarkets is coincide with the national level. Yet he provides no evidence to reinforce this assumption. Since the survey was made nationally, it mainly focuses on big cities instead of suburban towns, while residents in small towns may not relies as firmly as citizens to supermarkets for that they prefer to get fresh vegetables in groceries or farms. Furthermore, it might also be possible that people are actually quite satisfied with the vegetables in the markets, which cannot be revealed in the survey. Without eliminating such possibilities, the author cannot hastily draw to the conclusion that the town's residents are getting more interested in GC's vegetable seeds.

Secondly, another evidence is offered by the author that a certain gardening magazine has been sold out for three months, which would be a scant one to indicate that the town's residents would be avid to grow their own vegetables and thus buying seeds from GC. It is entirely possible that the newsstands decreased the stock of this magazine three months ago, or that the magazine itself has noting to do with growing vegetables, but concentrating on gardening such as flower growing and garden construction. Ignoring all these possible scenarios this fact that the magazine was sold out during the last three months turns out to be a poor evidence to support the author's conclusion.

Finally, by relying on the survey and the well selling of a magazine, the argument affirms that those who are dissatisfied with vegetables in supermarkets would turn to grow their own vegetables instead. But they may also fall back on local groceries or special vegetable markets, under which situations expanding the variety of vegetable seeds will definitely bring the company deficits for it violate the market's demands. Since the author fails to consider and rule out such situations, the assertion that local people dissatisfied with vegetables in supermarkets would be eager to buy seeds from GC to grow their own vegetables has poor persuasion power.

Simply put, the owner's argument is unconvincing for the reasons above. To make it more persuading the owner must provide with further evidence that residents in this town actually loss their satisfactions on vegetables in supermarkets and therefore diminish their purchasing amount on these vegetables. And to better evaluate this argument we need to make a judgmatic investigation on the alternative sources of vegetables in this suburban town---for instance, the main numbers and quality of vegetable providers, and the real reasons for the well selling of the gardening magazine.