AA013，欢迎批评

13. The following appeared as part of a campaign to sell advertising time on a local radio station to local businesses.

“The Cumquat Café began advertising on our local radio station this year and was delighted to see its business increase by 10 percent over last year’s totals. Their success shows you how you can use radio advertising to make your business more profitable.”

Citing the fact that the Cumquat Café increased its business after it began advertising on the local radio station, the author argues that radio advertising can make businesses more profitable. At first sight, the author’s line of reasoning seems to be somewhat convincing; after further examination, however, I find it logically problematic because it suffers from three critical flaws.

In the first place, the argument fails to establish a causal connection between using radio advertising and business increase. The mere fact that the Cumquat Café’s advertising on the local radio station coincided with its 10 percent business increase is insufficient to conclude that advertising on the local radio station caused the business increase. It is entirely possible that it is the company’s switching to different strategy which tends to sacrifice market share for profit maximization that leads to its business increase. Without compelling evidence to support the causal connection between these two events or to rule out other possible reasons for … , the argument’s recommendation is not worthy of consideration.

In the second place, it is highly doubtful that the fact drawn from the Cumquate Café which represents the service industry is applicable to other businesses such as companies which represent the manufacture industry. Differences between these two industries clearly outweigh the similarities, thus making the analogy highly less than valid. For example, the service industry sells intangible commercials, yet the manufacture industry sells tangible commercials. Problems like this might present insurmountable obstacles that lead the manufacture industry to prefer television advertising rather than radio advertising. The conclusion can not be true unless the author circumscribes it to more similar industries.

In the third place, the statistics cited in the argument may be misleading because the Comquate Café’s percent of business increase in the past years is not specified. On one hand, if the company’s business increased by only 1 percent in the past years, the fact that it increases by 10 percent lends strong support to the conclusion. On the other hand, however, if the company’s business increased by 9 percent in the past years, the conclusion is much weaker. Because the argument offers no evidence that would rule out this kind of interpretation, the cited statistics do not serve as sound evidence for the conclusion.

In conclusion, the author’s argument is not compelling because the argument fails to establish a causal connection between using radio advertising and business increase, the fact drawn from the Cumquate Café is not necessarily applicable to other businesses , and the statistics cited in the argument may be misleading. To strengthen the conclusion that radio advertising makes businesses more profitable, the author would have to provide compelling evidence to support the causal connection between using radio advertising and business increase. Additionally, circumscribing the conclusion to more similar industries and offering evidence that would rule out different kind of interpretation of the statistics would further substatiate the author’s view.

我觉得楼主漏掉了一个非常重要的flaw,就是profit=revenue-cost,文中只是说see its business increase by 10 percent over last year’s totals，所以我认为只是revenue的增长，It is possibly that cost of advertising outweigh the increase in revenue.

还有一个就是正文的第三段我觉得应该举例说以前的增长大于今年的，这样也许能更有力的进行反驳。

个人意见（且是新手），见谅。

谢谢你们！！

business increase那个，我也想到了，就是不太了解business的具体含义，所以没写，谢谢你的建议