The following appeared in a corporate memorandum of a beverage manufacturer:

"Our promotional price reductions on energy drinks have been highly successful, as we have seen a dramatic increase in unit sales. Further, surveys of our consumers indicate that this promotion was favorably received by the majority of our customers. Therefore, to improve our company's profitability and enhance its perception in the eyes of consumers, similar price reductions should be offered on all drinks produced by our firm."


In the preceding statement, the author claims that their firm should offered price reductions on all drinks the firm produce because of two reasons. First, promotional price reductions on energy drinks have increased in unit sales. Second, market surveys shows that consumers think the promotion was favorable. In spite of fact that his claims may have some merits, the author fails to consider many other potential factors involved. Based on several questionable assumptions and oversimplification, we cannot agree with his argument.

The primary issue about the author's reasoning is that it is based on unsubstantiated premises. The author asserts that their unit sales increased because of the promotion of energy drinks suggests that the promotion should be extended to all of the drinks the manufacturer produces. However, the author falsely assumes that consumers will continue to take it favorably after a long period. Despite the possibility that consumers may keep their habits of purchasing promoted energy drinks, the author is being too optimistic believing that this habit will remains constant. Consumers may get used to the lower price of that product and take it for granted. Once the price goes back to original, the consumers may not willing to buy it anymore since the price seems to be higher than usual. Furthermore, the revenue of the energy drinks is lower than usual which may hurt the profit of the manufacturer. Thus longer promotion in every drinks produced by the firm may harmed the profit of the firm in long-term. Therefore, the author should take more factors into account to build this conclusion.

Moreover, the author is making unappropriated analogy. The author wrongly assumes that the successful of the energy drinks can be implemented to the other drinks. Without any market survey, we cannot conclude that consumers will like other types of drinks this manufacturer make. Perhaps this manufacturer are famous for their energy drinks but not other products so the sales of other products may remain even the products are on sale. Thus the author should examine the analogy in more depths before they make the final decision.

Nevertheless, this argument is not at all without any based. What the author can do to make this argument more persuasive is to examine all the factors involved in the increased sales and make market research to find out what the consumers in favor of.

In conclusion, this argument is based on several unsupported premises and debatable assumptions that make his conclusion ineffective. If the author corrected these flaws, substantiated his assumptions, and provided statistical evidence, this argument would be more convincing and acceptable.