AA124

In this argument, the author suggests that Carlo's Clothing should switch from newspaper advertising to frequent radio advertisements in order to boost sales and profits. This conclusion is based on the evidence that Disc Depot, the music store on the next block drew more customers after its radio advertising campaign. Plausible at first sight, this argument actually suffers from several critical flaws, which undermine the validity of the conclusion that the arguer maintains.

First of all, the fact that foot traffic into the store largely increased does not necessarily mean that the music store has enlarged its business. Here the arguer simply equates visits with sales, which is unwarranted. It is possible that more people began to visit the music store after they heard the advertisement on the radio. But there is no guarantee that these visitors would actually buy products from the store. If Disc Depot just drew large crowds of customers without improving its sales records, then the advertising campaign contributed little to its profits.

Even if sales and profits did boost in Disc Depot, still the increase might not have been caused by the new radio advertising campaign. The author simply attributes the increase in the business of Disc Depot to the ad campaign without investigating other possible alternatives that may explain the increase. Perhaps the music store started a sales campaign at the same time with the ad campaign and its new customers who bought CDs were actually attracted by the exceptionally low price rather than radio advertisement. Unless the author can demonstrate that it is indeed the radio advertising that worked, we can hardly believe that the same type of campaign will do anything for Carlo's Clothing.

Finally, the arguer unfairly assumes that an advertising campaign effective to enhance business in a music store will work just as well for a clothing store. The inherent differences of the two distinct businesses might render the radio advertising useless for boosting sales in Carlo's Clothing. Obviously, the listeners can hear the music  from the radio directly while they have no way to feel about clothing directly from the radio advertisements. Moreover, radio listeners might be a crowd with much more interest in music than the average people. Therefore, a radio campaign works better for a music store.

To conclude, this argument is based on evidence partially interpreted and is therefore unconvincing as it stands. To better support his argument, the author would have to provide additional evidence to demonstrate that the radio advertising campaign did contribute sales increase in the music store. Meanwhile, the clothing store should take the difference of the two businesses into consideration before it copies the success of another store.