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 Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 im

According to the memorandum, the author argues that customers do not distinguish butter from margarin or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. At first glance, the argument seems persuasive; however, lack of alternative explanations leads me to conclude that this argument is unsound on many grounds.

First of all, the author needs to consider the alternative explanations that can account for the less number of complaints from the customers. Since the author does not mention when Happy Pancake House restaurants changed their policy, it is hard to conclude that customers do not care about margarine due to the fact that only 2 percent of people complained on it. It is possible that only few people complained because they changed their policy yesterday. Even if they replaced butter by margarine long time ago and can conclude that there were only few complaints, it is far-fetched to say that last 98 percent of people are happy with the change. The 98 percent of customers may not have affection on this restaurants so they do not feel necessity to complain about it for the restaurants' development. Thus, without explanations on the duration of the policy and people's response, the author cannot corroborate that most people are happy with the change.

Secondly, other alternatives for the the author needs to take into consideration the alternative explanations that can account for the number of customers who were fine with margarine. The author mentions that "many" servers have reported that "a number of" customers do not complain when they ask for butter and are given margarine instead. However, we cannot figure out whether the number of many servers or the number of customers is proportionally numerous. What I mean is that there is a possibility that 100 servers out of one million servers reported about the complaints. As we can see from this compelling example, the author needs to provide more specific report and explanations on this.

Last but not least, the author needs to consider other possible explanations when dealing with the soundness conclusion. The author adamantly conclude that those customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use 'butter' for both butter and margarine. However, even if all aforementioned alternative explanations can be provided by the author, these reports and less number of complaints cannot indicate that people do not distinguish those. As I mentioned before, not complaining does not means being satisfied with it. People could feel difference between butter and margarine, even could think that the taste is worsened, they do not necessarily need to express their inconvenience. Thus, the author cannot hastily conclude that ‘butter’ can refer both butter and margarine.

In brief, the author’s argument is unsound in many respects. In order to bolster the argument, the author should provide alternatives explanations on the number of customers who do no care about butter or margarine and conclusion.