The following appeared in a memo to the board of directors of BargainBrand Cereals.
"One year ago we introduced our first product, Bargain Brandbreakfast cereal. Our very low prices quickly drew many customers away from thetop-selling cereal companies. Although the companies producing the top brandshave since tried to compete with us by lowering their prices and althoughseveral plan to introduce their own budget brands, not once have we needed toraise our prices to continue making a profit. Given our success in sellingcereal, we recommend that Bargain Brand now expand its business and beginmarketing other low-priced food products as quickly as possible."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstatedassumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends onthese assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if theassumptions prove unwarranted.
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While it might be true that Bargain Brand should broaden its food range toother low-priced food products soon, the author doesn't make cogent inferenceto validate it. We can easily tell that Bargain Brand needs some moreopportunities to make profit, but this argument is rife with holes and weakassumptions. If we scrutinize the argument carefully, we can find severalunstated assumptions that may undermine this recommendation or even topple it.
The author cites the fact that low price cereal of Bargain Brand soldpretty well last year, and he contributes its popularity to the low price only.However, there is no sign showing that being a best-seller has nothing to dowith aspects other than the price. For instance, it's much likely that BargainBrand cereal has its own innovation, such as being crispy before soaked by milkand can well absorb a proper amount of milk. And these techniques are notapproachable by other companies, even the top-selling ones. If this happens, itmight be true that the low price is more or less attractive to people, but thequality of our cereal dominates. Therefore, the author's claim that ourcereal's being best-seller due to advantage in price makes no sense. To improvehis/her argument, the author has to provide more information which will show usthat it is the low price bringing profits rather than other possibleexplanations.
By almost the same token, by saying top-selling cereal companies stillcouldn't catch up with Bargain Brand even if they lowered down there price, theauthor want to show us Bargain Brand's talent in producing low-price products.This inference is lame if those top-selling companies didn't really want tocompete with us so they didn't low the price too much. They did this becausethey are producing other foods, like oatmeal, as well, and they didn't expecttoo much profit from cereal. Furthermore, it's also likely that they did sellless than Bargain Brand at a higher price, but they can make more profit than us.It makes sense if they sold cereal at a lower quantity but with a much higherprofit from each sell. Then the multiplication of the two terms, namely,producer total revenue is greater than us. In this sense, we are not that"successful" as it seems to be. Hence, the author has to saysomething more about it so that those two possibilities above can be eliminatedand make his original argument more cogent and persuasive.
Last, should we begin marketing other low-priced food products as theauthor says? This problem still holds if the two doubts above are dispelled.One success in cereal doesn't mean the same triumph also happens on otherlow-priced food. For example, if Bargain Brand wants to produce hot dog buns ortortillas, the core techniques are totally different from the artistries inmaking cereal. For the new products whose producing procedures are totally awayfrom cereal, we need to buy new machines or technology from others. Thoseplants and capitals are likely to cost a lot, which cannot be made up with in ashort term. Since Bargain Brand just started business in food for only oneyear, it might don't have abundant money to start a new business. If the authorwants to insist on his/her own plan, he/she has to give us more evidenceconfirming and supporting the idea. Otherwise, we cannot believe this idea andtake the advice in to consideration.
A more profitable and promising company is clearly wanted by the boardmembers of Bargain Brand, and we may should take some actions to improve andbetter the company. But whether we should begin marketing other low-priced foodproducts needs to be carefully scrutinized. Unless the author eliminates allthe above doubts by adding more information, we are not supposed to step alittle bit further about this recommendation. | 
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发表于 2013-2-28 13:41:36
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