The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The argument is a memorandum presented by the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants about the replacement of butter with margarine. Before pointing out the flaws in the argument let me throw some light on the composition of butter and margarine. Butter is a natural product and consists of a higher fat content and hence increases the cholesterol level whereas margarine is a man-made product (mainly from animal fat) and comprises of less fat content and helps in lowering the cholesterol level.
As presented in the argument, the manager has conveyed that the change has had a little impact on the customers as only 2 percent of them have complained about the change. Well this is not a proper evidence and is unwarranted. On no basis can it be assumed that if only 2 percent have complained, the rest of the customers are happy with the change. It is also possible that many of them do not prefer to have butter in their dish. So they will be least impacted by the change. It would have helped if a detailed analysis of the customer feedback of all the stores in South Western US had been done. Even better, a survey to know the feedback from customers would have strengthened the argument.
It is also important to provide information about the number of customers visiting the restaurant before using margarine and after using margarine. Also, it would have been helpful if the opinion of the chefs was taken into account. Was there a difference in the taste of the dish when margarine was used and which dish tasted better - one with butter or one with margarine. If there was a very minute difference, then, the manager may be right in saying that the customers could not distinguish between the two of them. On this basis the number of customers visiting the shop could have been formulated. But there is no detail provided about this.
The manager mentions the feedback given by the servers that the customers who asked for butter never complained when they were given margarine. But did the customers ask the servers if they had replaced butter with margarine? This detail is not given. Its only mentioned that they did not complain. Probably, they might have asked the servers about the change and were completely fine with the change since margarine is healthier.
Additionally, it is the responsibility of the owners to inform the customers about the change. Otherwise it can prove to be unethical and the number of customers visiting the restaurant might recede. Had these points been included in the memorandum, the argument would have been more cogent and convincing.
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| 2019-09-20 | Krishna Prasad | 46 | view |
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
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No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
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