The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books."We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because

The writer of the argument asserts that opening a café would attract more customers to Monarch books. The writer further supplies evidence regarding a decline in the percentage of the percentage of the population under age ten. Moreover, the author cites that Regal Books managed to attract more customers by opening its own café. Close scrutiny of the evidences reveals that they lend little creditable support for the recommendation.

First of all, the author’s notion about the attraction of more customers is ambiguous to some extent. Query whether the customers are attracted to buy some coffee, for instance, from the café, or to buy books from the store needs to be answered. I would need to know exactly that customers refer to which of the two cases mentioned above. Assuming that the author refers to customers who buy books, the recommendation would not sound logical. The author overlooks the possibility that the new customers might just intended to have a coffee, yet were not interested to buy books from the store. If this is the case, the author’s recommendation lacks any merit whatsoever.

Another compelling argument against the author’s recommendation has to do with the cited statistics regarding the national census. I would need to know that what portion of the Monarch Books’s sale is consisted of children’s books. Maybe Monarch Books’s major sale is children’s books, in which event the author’s recommendation for disconnecting the children’s book section would amounts to especially poor advice for Monarch Books. In short, without accounting for this plausible scenario, I cannot accept the author’s recommendation.

Finally, the recommendation relies on what might be a false analogy between Monarch Books and Regal Books. In order for Regal Books to act as a model for Monarch Books, the author must assume that all relevant circumstances regarding the two book stores are essentially the same. Absent any evidence that this is the case, the author cannot conclude that opening a café would bring the same results in Monarch Books. Perhaps Regal Books managed to attract more customers due to a successful advertising campaign. Alternatively, maybe Regal Books decreased the price of its books; hence, more customers were attracted to buy books from their stores. In brief, the writer of the argument cannot defend the recommended course of action on the basis of what might be a false analogy between the two stores.

In sum, the argument is not logical, therefore unpersuasive. To bolster the argument the author must: (1) elaborate on the customers, whether they are attracted to buy books or buy a coffee from the café (2) indicate that how much of its sale relates to children’s books (3) provide substantiating evidence that Regal and Monarch Books are similar in all respects.