The following appeared in a memo from the business manager of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States."For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however,

The argument seems to make several assumptions that, if untrue, would seriously weaken the argument that the stories should discontinue stocking many varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses.

The biggest assumption the argument makes seems to be on deciding that there should be changes to the stock in domestic and imported cheeses simply because of one new store that opened. The paragraph only states that the five best selling cheeses at the newest store were domestic cheeses. This does not give any information on how well domestic versus imported cheeses sell at other stores. We don’t have information on how many stores this chain has. If there are several stores, one store should not make a difference. In order for the argument to at least hold claim from a superficial level, a significant number of stores needed to have been described as having best selling domestic cheeses. As it is now, if the assumption that this store is significant enough to affect the entire business of the cheeses proves to be false, then discontinuing stock of imported cheeses may prove to be a mistake because it may be that imported cheeses are generating a significant amount of the revenue.

Another assumption the argument makes is in concluding that “best selling domestic cheeses” means “domestic cheeses are generating more revenue.” Perhaps the cheeses are best selling in terms of units sold, but there is no information on the revenue that they generate. Perhaps domestic cheeses are a lot cheaper than imported cheeses and are therefore sold more, but maybe imported cheeses still generate greater revenue. If the assumption that best selling equals most revenue proves to be false, then making the decision to discontinue imported cheeses may prove to be a mistake and would hurt the company overall.

Another piece of the argument that needs to be analyzed further is where the store and cheeses are from. The argument makes the assumption that domestic cheeses are best selling overall and that because of this, the chain should concentrate primarily on stocking domestic cheeses. However, the best selling domestic cheeses are said to be from Wisconsin. Perhaps only the domestic cheeses from Wisconsin are favored, and perhaps aside from these cheeses imported cheeses are a lot more popular than all other domestic cheeses. If this is so and the original assumption is false, it would severely weaken the argument. Furthermore, there is no information on where the newest store is located. It is possible that the reason domestic cheeses from Wisconson are the the five best selling is because the newest store is actually located in Wisconsin. Maybe people from Wisconsin simply want their cheese to be from their own state but other people in other states and other stores do not feel the same way. The argument depends on all the assumptions about domestic cheeses from Wisconsin being sold at the newest store and having a significant impact on the chain’s revenue because, if all of these small assumptions turned out to be false in the ways I illustrated, the argument would not hold.

One of the biggest assumptions the argument makes is related to the survey. It assumes that a recent survey by Cheeses of the World indicating an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers means that the chain’s customers prefer domestic cheeses to imported cheeses as a whole, but that may simply not be true. There is no information on how many people were surveyed, which is a huge flaw in itself since we don’t know if a significant amount of people even responded. If not, then it has no bearing on the argument. It also makes the assumption that subscribers showing an increasing preference actually means that they prefer domestic cheeses to imported cheeses. Perhaps subscribers never really had much enthusiasm for domestic cheeses and that is only recently changing. However, if they were to be asked which cheeses they preferred, they may still say imported. If the assumption that an increasing preference meant a preference over imported turned out to be false, it would weaken the argument. The argument also makes the assumption that the subscribers are in any way related to the chain’s customers. Perhaps only 2% of customers are actually subscribers, which means that the survey results should not impact the company. If the assumption turned out to be false, it would also mean that the survey results should be ignored rather than being accounted for and later hurting the company for their decision.

Even if all of the assumptions I pointed out turned out to be true, perhaps domestic cheeses are best selling due to customers not being fans of the varieties of imported cheeses. Perhaps instead of discontinuing stock of imported cheeses, the chain needs to make sure to stock different varieties of imported cheeses that customers like. Of course, this is assuming that the various assumptions made by the argument were true, but as I pointed out, it is filled with flaws and weaknesses that at any point would undermine the overall argument.