The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Health Naturally a small but expanding chain of stores selling health food and other health related products Our previous experience has been that our stores are most profitable in ar

In the memorandum, the vice president of Health Naturally recommends building one of their new stores in Plainsville, where the residents are considered to be conscious towards leading healthy lives. The vice president cites that their stores had been lucrative in such areas with people conscious of healthy lives. Moreover, the vice president presents reports of different products and clubs—local health club, weight training, aerobic classes, Fitness for Life and more—to support his or her assertion that Plainsville has residents concerned about their health. However, the vice president does not provide any information about existing similar store, which could be a competition for them or about the continuity of such life style while excepting new generation of customers and many more. Even though the store building a new store in Plainsville could turn out to be beneficial one, the argument hinges on unfounded assumptions, if not substantiated, will undermine the persuasiveness of the argument. Therefore, more pieces of evidences are necessary to evaluate the argument.
Firstly, the vice president assumed people to be extremely concerned about living a healthy lives relying on the sales of the running shoes is high, inundated local health club, and people participating in other such activities. But what indeed is the parameter for measuring the concern of the people to lead a salubrious life? It is possible that the people were all patients of heart diseases and had to perform such activities. Perhaps, there were other reasons for the participation of the people in the abovementioned activities. The increase in the sale could be because the merchants were selling the running shoes and exercise equipments with heavy discounts. Maybe the local health clubs might have offered free membership and similar might be the case in other classes. The people might be so apathetic about their health that only because of the aforementioned conditions the results mentioned in the argument might have been possible. Consequently, people might not be interested in consuming the products of Health Naturally, which targets people living healthy life style, and thereby building of the store in the place might not be a good idea.
Secondly, the vice president assumes only one factor—residents conscious about healthy life style—while planning to build their store in Plainsville. There might be other similar stores which might be well-established and to overcome their popularity might be a tough task for the store. It might not even be fecund for the Health Naturally to establish a new store where they are certain not to perform well because of the pre-existing better store. Thus, the vice president should provide evidence that no such adversaries would be a hurdle to make their new store in Plainsville a lucrative one.
Lastly, simply by stating the participation of the children in program related to exercise, the vice president assumes them would be their customer. The vice president does not present evidence to support this supposition. There might be no product suitable for the children in the store or the children might not be interested even if there are any. Moreover, just because the children are participating in an exercise program today does not mean that they could continue living a healthy lifestyle. In the later days, when they build their store, the children might be lured by other products that are not offered by the store. In such a scenario, the vice president's anticipation about having new generation of customers will not hold water.
All in all, such unwarranted assumptions make the plan of the vice president to build a new store a dubious one. Further, additional information which supports that the residents of Plainsville would indeed be interested in purchasing products from the store needs to be presented. Without analysis of the possible competition they would have to face and the actual interest of the residents, it might not be prudent to build a new store. Evidence that validate the assumption of the vice presidents and in favor of the success of the new store is necessary to validate the argument.