GMAT Essays (AWA)

The following was used as part of an internet advertising company's appeal to businesses: Furniture Depot employed our internet advertising company to help. SincA 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.

The internet advertising company's appeal to various business is based on an assumption that there was a cause and effect relationship between Furniture Depot employing the internet advertising company and Furniture Depot's increase in sales. In my opinion , the basis of the internet company's appeal is flawed because the conclusion cannot be derived based on the artifacts presented in the argument.

First, the internet company relates 2 events without any showing any inter relationship between the 2 events - the first event is the hiring of the internet ad company and the second event is the Furniture Depot's increase in sales. Coincidentally , during the same period, the Furniture Depot's sales department introduced key initiatives to effective track and pursue sales leads till closure of deal. Also, Furniture Depot's service department launched a new customer centric internet portal which enabled customers to easily place orders. There were other departments within Furniture Depot which also introduced key initiatives during the same period. In context of all these initiatives which were launched , it would be difficult to relate the sales increase purely to the hiring of the internet company and not the other initiatives. A poll to gather information from all customers making purchases during the period could be conducted to ascertain the primary drivers which promp!
ted the customers to make purchases should be conducted. If the results of the poll could then be used to establish the causal relationship between the internet advertising company's efforts and Furniture Depot's sales increases.

Secondly, the internet advertisement company provides statistics on the Fire Depot's sales and ends up claiming that hiring them would result help companies improve their profitability. Increase of revenue does not necessarily imply profitability. A company X 's sales might increase year over year but due to inefficiencies in operations, it could still suffer losses. In this argument , no evidence supporting the fact that Furniture Depot's profitability has increased has been provided.

In sum, I think the internet company's claim to fame by ensuring increases in Furniture Depot's sales is far stretched in the absence of key evidence which would have otherwise helped in establishing a cause-effect relationship between Furniture Depot hiring the internet ad company and and Furniture Depot's sales increasing