For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses Last year however all of the five best selling cheeses at our newest store were domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin Furthermore a recent surve

In the current response to the a memo from the business manager of a chain of cheese stores in US, I want examine the strengths of the arguments’ assumptions and implications made by the business manager of the chain. The manager proposes to limit importing cheeses, and concentrate on domestic cheeses to improve profits. This recommendations was based on two sources – statistics on cheese sells at one of the newest chain’s store and the recent poll by Cheeses of the World magazine.

As for the first source, I see several important implications. First of all, the manager assumes that the considered store for some reasons represents the average chain store. In that case, it would be plausible to make generalization to all stores based only on statistics on one store. Yet, it is highly probable that the above assumption may not reflect the real situation. Firstly, the newest store can have some characteristics that will contrast it a lot compared to other stores. It can target the specific consumers in specific neighborhood, that are more likely to buy domestic cheese for many reasons (e.g. income, ideological believes etc.). The information on this store’s location could have helped here. For instance, if that store is situated in Wisconsin or in neighboring states, it will be easier to understand why all of the best-selling cheeses are from Wisconsin. For example, it may be due to lower prices (that can be because of the cheaper transportation costs compared to the other states) of the cheese, or due to patriotic motivations that make people more likely to buy the cheese produced in the state of their residence. Secondly, it must been noticed that all of the best-selling cheeses are not simply domestic but comes from one state – Wisconsin, that hardly represents the variety of American cheeses. Perhaps, other types of domestic are incompatible with imported cheese. Overall, after analyzing the first source of manager’s argument, I can state the issue of generalizability in two aspects: to which point the newest store in the unknown location represents all the chain’s stores, and to which point the Wisconsin’s cheddar cheese represent the average product of American cheese industry.

Now, I want to discuss the assumptions, and the implications of the second source used by the manager – last survey Cheeses of the World magazine stating that the preference for domestic cheese has increased among its subscribers. First of all, the manager may assume that the journal’s subscribers participated to the poll are comparable with the chain’s cheese consumers. Otherwise, it would be problematic to extrapolate the trends observed in one specific group to another group. It is highly probable that these two groups are very different. For instance, the poll conducted by the journal may be international, and reflect a cross-country trend rather than a trend observable in the United States. Also, it is possible that the average reader of the magazine may have a particular interest in cheese industry while the latter can be absent among the majority of the chain’s cheese consumers. Second of all, the manager assumes that the trend in increased interest to domestic cheese is so strong, that people prefer more it than the imported cheese. It may the case that this trend still contributed few to the absolute numbers of domestic cheese sells compared to the foreign cheese sells for two reasons: (1) the marginal grow in interest is still not enough large; (2) the rising interest may not converge to rising sells, because the former and the latter are not necessarily connected.

Eventually, I have tried to give a response to the memo by the business manager of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States where I considered her arguments in support of restricting the variety of the imported cheese in favor of domestic one. Based solely on the information provided, I identified the main assumptions, and implications of the arguments with particular emphasis on the cases under which they may be not consistent. Overall, it is necessary to focus on the issues of generalization from one case to a broader population of things, and the plausibility of the comparison between two units based on the temporal dynamic known for only one unit.