The following appeared in a memo from New Ventures Consulting to the president of HobCo, Inc., a chain of hobby shops.
“Our team has completed its research on suitable building sites for a new HobCo hobby Shop in the city of Grilldon. We discovered that there are currently no hobby shops in southeastern Grilldon. When our researchers conducted a poll of area residents, 88 percent of those who responded indicated that they would welcome the opening of a hobby shop in southeastern Grilldon. Grilldon is in a region of the nation in which the hobby business has increased by 300 percent during the past decade. In addition, Grilldon has a very large population of retirees, a demographic with ample time to devote to hobbies. We therefore recommend that you choose southeastern Grilldon as the site for your next HobCo Hobby Shop. We predict that a shop in this area will draw a steady stream of enthusiastic new HobCo customers.”
The notion that Grilldon is a suitable place for HobCo Hobby Shop opening the next store seems plausible at first glance. The consulting company believes the demographic and the poll can justify the success in the future. However, with further scrutiny, some questions are needed to be answered. Here we will discuss below.
First of all, the New Ventures Consulting cites a poll conducted by its researchers that shows 88 percent of responders welcomed the opening of a hobby shop. However, we lose the information about how the poll conducts and who respond to the poll. Without these two important details, there may be a chance that the responders are mainly focusing on a certain age, and it cannot reflect the true opinion of the general public in southeastern Grilldon. Therefore, the argument is weakened, and the author should provide more essential data about the poll.
Even if the poll is valid and feasible, the author claims that southeastern Grilldon is in a region which has increased the hobby business dramatically. Nonetheless, although the author mentioned a very high number, which is three hundred percent, we do not know about other regions in a nation. Some other places may even have a higher increase in this business rather than mere three hundred percent, so the data is not compelling enough to persuade the president of HobCo, Inc. Consequently, before we have further information about the development of hobby business in the whole nation during the past decade, the argument is not persuasive.
Finally, the author claims that the very large population of retirees with ample time to devote to hobbies will draw a steady stream of new customers for HobCo. However, there are many factors that the author did not consider or omit information. For example, those retirees may have an unhealthy body to sustain themselves to enjoy hobbies. They may be more willing to devote the time and money to health care, rather than spend time in hobby shops. Without healthy physical functions, it is impossible to enjoy anything. Hence, the argument commits the fallacy of simplifications about the relation of demographic and the hobby shop business.
To sum up, the argument is rife with holes and omissions. To strengthen the argument, I suggest the author that he should provide solid information about the poll will be needed, the comparison of the hobby business development between the national scale and southeastern Grilldon, and the detail of the health status of those retirees is essential. Therefore, before the questions mentioned above are answered, the argument is untenable.
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