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Question:

The following was used as part of an internet advertising company's appeal to businesses: "Furniture Depot employed our internet advertising company to help. Since then its sales increased by 10% over last year's totals. Furniture Depot's success demonstrates how using our internet services can increase your profitability."

Describe how well reasoned you find this argument. In the discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the argument's conclusion. You may also address possible changes in the argument that would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

Essay:

The argument in the discussion is that by employing the internet advertising company, the Furniture Depot improved the profits by 10%. Further it is mentioned that the success of the Furniture Depot demonstrates the internet advertising sevices role in improving the profitability. The reasoning in the argument is flawed. There were no statistics provided in the argument to provide the role of internet advertising to attract the customers. For example, the number of people visited the shop after going thru the internet advertising.
In the argument, there is no mention of the other modes of the advertising used by the Furniture Depot. So it not possible to come to a conlusion that internet advertising increased the sales.

There might be sevaral other factors that might have caused the increase. The growth of city was more than normal last year since several new industries were opened for operation and the population of the city increased with the addition of new work force. The the new settlements contributed significantly to the increase in the purchase of the Furniture Depot. Growth in the city caused increse in the News Paper readership in the city increased the last year and this might have attributed to the increase in sales, since the advertisement is newspapers as well.

Other reason is there was reduction in the prices last year due to the clearence sales. This move triggered the increase of the purchases due to low prices and hence the increase in the sales. Management change in the Furniture Depot, last year made several changes in the advertising, sales and pricing of the furniture strategies in the Furniture Depot. The show room was refurbised and made more attractive. The prices were discounted and these changes lured the customers to make more purchases in the Furniture Depot.

Finally, by providing additional details like the the other modes of advertising done by Furniture mart, a survey to provide the percentage of customers who visited and purchased the furniture based on the internet advertising would have made the argument more logical. So I disagree with the argument that the internet advertising helped the Furniture depot to increase the sales.

-- Sai Krishna

Thankyou for your valuable suggestions.