13. The following appeared as part of a campaign to sell advertising time on a local radio station to local businesses.
“The Cumquat Cafe 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.”
According to the argument, the author illogically concludes that advertising on local radio station will lead to more business profits. The major assumption underlying the claim is that the advertising on radio station contributes to Cumquat Cafe's profit increase. The author's recommendation, however, is biased for the following reasons.
To begin with, the author hastily concludes that the advertising causes profit increase only because the former happens occasionally before the latter. The evidence provided, however, is insufficient to establish the causal relationship between them. Many other factors may also help to explain Cumquat Cafe's success. For example, the profit may increase because of Cumquat Cafe's superior service, or perhaps Cumquat Cafe provides a new favor that is very popular. Without ruling out these possibilities, the author reaches an unwarranted conclusion.
Second, the author commits the fallacy of "all things equal", implying that cafe businesses and other businesses are analogous in all respects. Granted that the advertising on local radio station is responsible for the cafe's profitability, the strategy can not guarantee a same triumph in other business. For example, it is possible that the tactic works well in cafe business, but it is not useful in publishing business because people who like reading rarely listen to radio. Or perhaps the tactic can not help automobile business because people intended to buy cars generally dislike to car advertising on radio. These potentialities, if true, would greatly undermine the success rate of the advertising strategy.
In addition, the triumph of radio advertising last year does not necessarily indicates that the trend will continue this years. If there is an apparent tendency that the number of people who listen to radio will go down this year, then it is unwise for other businesses to apply this strategy. As it stands, the author’s easy conclusion is entirely unfounded.
Last but not least, the author cites the result of Cumquat Cafe to solidify his conclusion that sell advertising on radio is instrumental in stimulating profits. The representativenss of the result is open to doubt because only one cafe was investigated. Unless the author can offer more evidence to convince us that the cafe represent all other cafe businesses in this region, we can hardly evaluate whether the radio advertising is helpful in profit increase.
To sum up, the argument is not persuasive as it stands. To bolster his conclusion, the author has to offer more concrete information to convince us that the cafe business is analogous to many other businesses, and the strategy used by cafe business can also guarantee a same triumph in other business such as automobile. Moreover, the author needs to broaden his sample to provide a more representative result.
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