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The following appeared in an Excelsior Company memorandum.
“The Excelsior Company plans to introduce its own brand of coffee. Since coffee is an expensive food item, and since there are already many established brands of coffee, the best way to gain customers for the Excelsior brand is to do what Superior, the leading coffee company, did when it introduced the newest brand in its line of coffees: conduct a temporary sales promotion that offers free samples, price reductions, and discount coupons for the new brand.”(54)
The conclusion endorsed in this argument is that the Excelsior Company should adopt the strategies that Superior Company once employed to introduce Excelsior’s own brand of coffee. Although the argument seems to be plausible at first glance, further reflection reveals that the judgment is based on some dubious assumptions and the reasoning is biased due to the inadequacy and partiality in the nature of the evidence provided to substantiate the conclusion.
First, the author assumes that the facts drawn from Superior Company are applicable to Excelsior Company. Differences between these two companies far outweigh similarities, thus making the analogy much less valid. For instance, since Superior Company is the leading coffee company, it must have strong money flow that can endure the loss brought by the conduction of sales promotion. Yet, whether Excelsior Company can endure such a temporary loss? Does this company have the ability to sustain in the fierce competition? If the answers are no, then we must admit that Excelsior Company and Superior Company might be dissimilar in ways relevant to the likelihood that Excelsior Company would experience the same consequence if it adopt the strategies previously conducted by Superior Company.
Besides, the author rests on the assumption that a sales promotion would ultimately bring more consumers to buy products of Excelsior Company. This assumption, however, is never supported by any data or projections. For example, if consumers are highly addicted to their chosen coffee brand, this phenomenon may lead to a possibility that no consumers will turn to Excelsior Company for a change in taste, even if the company has discounts on its products. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the feasibility of the sales promotion suggestion is required to make the recommendation more convincing.
Moreover, the author contends that conditions remained unchanged in the past decades. Yet, we do not have any essential background information that can help us to justify this assumption. Though it may be effective to conduct a promotion sale years before by Superior Company, today this strategy may be useless. In other words, the author does not take into account the feedback from consumers towards promotions. A more detailed survey among consumers may be helpful in determining which strategy to choose for a company to broaden its market share.
To sum up, the argument is not plausible as it stands. To make it more logically acceptable, the author should provide survey results and analysis that show the strategy can help the Excelsior Company to win some customers. In addition, evidence demonstrating that Excelsior Company is similar to Superior Company in many ways is needed. Only with more convincing evidence can this argument become more than just an emotional appeal. |
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发表于 2011-5-2 11:19:06
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