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The following appeared in a memo from the president of the Meltaway Company, a producer of ice cream. “Health concerns and convenience appear to be the key factors affecting sales of ice cream. Last year’s publication of research suggesting that some types of fat can be beneficial to health must have made people more willing to eat regular ice cream, which contains fat. Over the past year, national sales of regular ice cream increased about 8 percent, while sales of fat-free or lowfat ice cream increased by only 1 percent. During the same time period, sales of ice cream were similarly affected by consumers’ demand for convenience, as grocery stores increased their sales volume for ice cream by 9 percent, compared to a 3 percent increase for ice-cream parlors and other stores specializing in ice cream. Therefore, we can expect that most of our profits over the next few years will come from providing regular ice cream to grocery stores.”
In the argument, the author makes a prediction that most of the profits of ice-cream over the next few years will come from providing regular ice-cream to grocery store. To buttress his claim, the author points out that over the past year, national sales of regular ice-cream increased by 8% but that of fat-free or low fat ice cream increased only by 1%. In addition, he reasons that meanwhile consumers, taking convenience into consideration, prefer to buy ice-creams from grocery rather than from other stores specializing in ice cream. Moreover, the author also assumes that regular ice-cream with some types of fat will spur people to buy because of it is more healthy. At first glance, the author’s argument appeals to be somewhat plausible, but a closer examination will reveal how groundless it is. The argument suffers from several logic flaws as follows.
First, the argument commits the fallacy of All Things are Equal. The conclusion depends on the questionable assumption that customers’ preference for fat ice-cream will remain unchanged. However, that's not necessarily the case. People's preference for quick-consume products will change quickly in line with the market change. The current situation would not certainly be the same as it used to be. Thus, it is not proper to conclude that sales of regular ice-cream will still keep high sales increase in the following year.
Second, the argument suffers a fallacy of casual oversimplification. The line of the reasoning is that the factor that people likes convenience occurs at the same time that sales increases in grocery store. Yet, the two factors are only positive correlated, which does not provide sufficient evidence that they have casual relationship. Lacking a detailed analysis of the casual relationship between the two factors, it would be sheer folly to attribute the sales increase to the peoples’ preference for convenience. Third, the argument contends that health problem is the only cause for the sales increase of grocery, which sells regular-ice cream. While, the author rules out many other factors. For example, the grocery locates in an area with many neighboring residents and its owner is a more experienced business man.
Fourth, the argument does not reveal who conducts the survey. If the Meltaway Company is a regular-ice cream producer who can get some vested-interests from the research, then the conclusion would be weakly-founded.
In summary, the argument will be more convincing if the author could provide the evidence that the trend of people's preference for regular ice-cream keeps unchanged; More sales increase in grocery store only results from the fact that its ice cream contains some types of fat and its convenience; Meltcompany is in a fair position to conduct the publication of research..
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发表于 2005-8-23 15:48:00
发表于 2005-8-23 18:51:00
