The following is part of a business plan created by the management of the Megamart grocery store.“Our total sales have increased this year by 20 percent since we added a pharmacy section to our grocery store. Clearly, the customer’s main concern is the co

In this argument, the author reached the conclusion that the sales increase in the grocery store is because they introduced a pharmacy section in their store this year and they proposed that they could realize the increase of their profits in the next couple of years by introducing other sections such as clothing department and repair stop, which will meet the customers’ demand that they could have one-step purchasing experience and the shopping is more convenient. The author’s invisible assumptions and reasoning procedures are gratuitous; thus, the author’s argument is quite unconvincing.

To begin with, the author’s argument is based on an unwarranted assumption that the increases in the sales are equal to the increase in the profits. But the author did not remind us to consider other factors that may influence the increase of sales this year. Take the economic tendency as an example, if the inflation rate increased dramatically this year and the soaring rate caused the price of the labors(wages)and raw materials increase, the grocery store needed to augment its selling price to sustain its per profit margin. So in that case, the profit of the grocery store could not have a substantial enhancement.

Moreover, the professor committed a fallacy that the only reason why the sales of the grocery store increased is that the introduction of the pharmacy section in the store. But the author forgot to rule out other possible explanation. On the one hand, if the average salary of citizens in the area in which the grocery stores were settled has increased during these years, the citizens would consume more money on purchasing necessities from the grocery stores. On the other hand, maybe the great selling performance was correlated to the improvement of service quality and the elegant ornaments which could fascinate some customers to buy more things. If the author did not affirm that other elements could not influence the sales, this argument is questionable.

Thirdly, the author over generalized the effects of introduction of other life section. People go to the grocery store to buy some medicine because purchasing medicine in the grocery is easy to do and they could save time to acquire a prescription from a physian.But to other services, the conditions may be different. For example, if citizens prefer to buy their clothes in the big shopping mall near the community rather than purchase the clothes in the grocery stores. This strategy will not work. Plus, if people are more likely to go the professional repairing store and search help, the repairing section in the grocery store does not make sense any more.

Ultimately, the author’s argument is ill-founded and unsupported by his ideas. To make the argument more convincing, the author needs to clarify the reasons that do not affect the sales in the store and prove that the profits in the store have increased in this year. To evaluate the argument, we need to acquire more reliable information from inside and outside the grocery store such as the average salary in the country, the other alternatives used to attract customers and the economic trend. If I cannot acquire information above, I am not convinced by this argument and this argument will remain suspected.