The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores."Because of declining profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore's ten movie-rental stores. Raising prices is not a good option, since

While it might be true that reducing operating expenses might lead to increase in profits for Movies Galore's rental stores, the authors argument fails to present a cogent case for it. To responsibly evaluate the argument we need more evidence and consider other plausible factors involved.

For one, the author cites example of the store in downtown Marston reducing its operational cost by closing early. First, we will need to understand what constitutes of the operational expenses, is it the pay to the workers? electricity and utility charges? what percentage of the profits are operational expenses. It might turn out that even reduced operational costs have failed to increase profits at the Marston store.

For another, the sole example of store in downtown Maston cannot be used to generalize the effect. It could be so, that people in downtown have such working hours where closing the store at 6:00 PM won't reduce the profits. However, such might not be the case elsewhere. In areas where public living in surrounding areas is active during late evenings, any such desicion might prove disastorous. We will need information about public behaviour in areas surrounding the stores before we can evaluate the argument.

Furthermore, the idea of eliminating movies released more than 5 years ago seems unwarranted. Instead for putting faith in such unreasonable claims, we must ask what kind of movies are generally do not get rented out. More often than not it is the movies that were flops are the one who fail to make any profit. Old movies like Star wars are one of the most liked ones. If such be the case, it weakens the argument. It is suggestible that surveys are conducted among current customers to gauge their interests and understand their preferences.

Its easy to understand that the owner of the store has the good will of the store in mind. However in order to evaluate the argument responsibly, a lot more evidence must be collected and analysed before we make a claim and act on it. Understanding in detail factors like; What percent of total expenses is made of operational cost?; Do all stores have surrounding areas that can be represented by downtown Marston? Are all movies released more than 5 years ago actually non profitable? will surely help us evaluate the argument better.