First AA- please adivise: 用魔板

jannyguo

The following appeared in a memorandum to a team developing accounting software for SmartPro Software, Inc.:
“Currently, more professional accountants use SmartPro accounting software than any other brand. However, in the market for personal accounting software for non-professionals to use in preparing their income tax returns, many of our competitors are outselling us. In surveys, our professional customers repeatedly say that they have chosen SmartPro Software because our most sophisticated software products include more advanced special features than competing brands. Therefore, the most effective way for us to increase sales of our personal accounting software for home users would clearly be to add the advanced special features that our professional software products currently offer.”

The conclusion endorsed in this argument is suggested that the most effective way to increase the software sales to non-professional customer by adding advanced features used to sale to professional customers. Several reasons have been offered to support this argument. First of all, the author point out that the one survey on professional customers showed that their customers gave very positive feedback of the advanced features. In addition, the author reasons that the lower sales in non-professional customers were due to the offered software do not have the advanced features. At first glance, the arguments appears to be somewhat convincing, however, further reflection reveals that the conclusion is based on dubious assumptions and the reasoning is biased due to inadequacy and partiality of the evidence in nature provided to support the conclusion. Several main points would be highlighted to evaluation how groundless the argument is.
First, the argument rests on the assumption that non-professional customer is analogous to professional customers in all aspects. This point is weak, although there are some points of comparison of non-professional customers and professional customers, there are much dissimilarity as well. For example, non-professional customers prefer competitors’ software might have some other reasons other than the advanced features, such as price, easy of use. However, professional customers prefer advanced features might because the need from work, such as huge data analysis, special functions, therefore they do not care the price since company would pay. Thus, it might be difficult for non-professional customers to buy the software with advanced features that would cost even more.
Secondly, the survey mentioned in the argument is doubtful. The sale of the software in non-professional customers is low because this group of customer is using the competitors. However, the survey did in the group of professional customers. Even the professional customers repetitively reported they prefer SmartPro software, the results from professional customers would not represent that from non-professional ones. Therefore, it is impossible to evaluate the validity of the survey. In additional, because the arguments did not offer any evidence to rule out this kind of interpretations, until this question is answered, the results of the survey is worthless as evidence of the conclusion.
Furthermore, the author commits a fallacy of casual oversimplification. The author reason that the lower sales of the software in non-professional consumers was because the software do not have the advanced features, and deduced that the advanced features is responsible for the sales. The fact that software without advanced features coincided with lower marketing share in non-professional consumers does not necessarily proved that lower sales was due to advanced features absence. This is fallacious reasoning unless other casual explanations have been considered and ruled out. For example, lower price from competitor might be a reason for low sales.
To conclude, this argument is not persuasive as it stands. Accordingly, it is imprudent to claim that the sale in non-professional customers would increase by adding the advanced features that developed for professional users. To make this argument more logically acceptable, the author would have to show that requires between those two target customers, and the difference between SmartPro software and competitors' software. In addition to, in order to solidify the conclusion, the author would have to provide concrete evidence as well as demonstrate appropriate correlation to support the conclusion. Only with more convincing evidence could this argument become more than just an emotional appeal.