argument111 fantasy

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题目：ARGUMENT 111 - The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of marketing at Dura-Sock, Inc.
"A recent study of Dura-Sock wearers suggests that our company is wasting the money it spends on its patented "Endure" manufacturing process, which ensures that our socks are strong enough to last for two years. Dura-Sock has always advertised its use of the "Endure" process, but the new study shows that the average Dura-Sock customer actually purchases new Dura-Socks every three months. Furthermore, Dura-Sock customers surveyed in our largest market, northeastern United States cities, say that they most value Dura-Sock's stylish appearance and availability in many colors. These findings suggest that Dura-Sock can increase its profits by discontinuing its use of the "Endure" manufacturing process."
字数：464          用时：0:30:00          日期：2005-9-12

The memo from the vice president of Dura-Sock indicates that the company is wasting money in so-called "Endure" manufacturing process and should cease to use it so as to increase profits. To substantiate his or her opinion, the arguer cites the evidences that customer purchases new Dura-Socks every three months, and he or she also use a customer survey to strengthen the argument. However, there are several mistakes in this argument as follow.

In the first place, the arguer unfairly equal the fact that customers purchases new socks every three month to the reason that the Dura-Socks can only endure three months. It is quite possible that the customers prefer new ones to the formal ones even the old ones can still suitable to wear. And every three month is periodic turn of season changing. Probably the customers wear different kind of socks in different seasons, so they change socks every three months. Without rule out these possibilities, the assumption that Dura-Socks can only last three months is ungrounded.

In the second place, the reliability of the survey is still open to doubt. The arguer does not provide any concrete information about how large is the sample of customers and do the customers are chosen randomly or just among a specific group. Since these factors are not given in the argument, the result of the survey is inconvincible.

Even granted that the result of survey is correct, customers' preference of stylish appearance to availability in northeastern cities dose not necessary mean that the whole customers of the country have the same inclination. There may be a lot of market area in United States and the northeastern is just a little more above the second largest one so it can only constitute a small part of the total market shares. The preference of customers there dose not representative enough to show all the customers' inclination.

Last, to increase profits by discontinuing use of "Endure' manufacturing process is not the best one. Common sense tells us that profit is the result of income and the cost. Even the Dura-Sock change its object of produce, spend large money to emphasize the stylish appearance instead of continuing the "Endure" process and make the socks most fashionable in the market therefore attract the customers and occupy a large share of the market. Their sales are accordingly increase dramatically and there is a big augment in the income. However, the money spent in designing the style is far more than the cost of 'Endure' process. So in balance, the profit maybe remains the same or even decrease.

In conclusion, these several problems make this argument incomplete and unpersuasive. To strengthen the recommendation, the arguer should provide additional information about all the customers' preference and detail statistic in the income and cost.

[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-9-12 at 19:29 ]