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."
Though it seems at the first glance that the internet advertising company has made a good enough claim in suggesting the usefulness of internet services for businesses, but a closer look at the arguments presented reveals leaps of faith, poor reasoning and ill-defined terminology.
There is a lack of empirical evidence to support the advertising company's claim. But, keeping that aside, there is a serious problem with its line of reasoning. The company quotes the example of Furniture Depot to substantiate its claim but this alone is not enough to generalise it for all other businesses. You have to correlate the similar success in Furniture business to all other businesses.
Secondly, if you read the above stimulus with a critical eye you can gauge the weakness of the argument. No data has been given to show whether the increase in sales of Furniture Depot was just a one-off phenomenon or not. No one is going to trust company's claim that increase in sales were a direct result of internet advertising and not because of any other factor. One needs a strong and a data spreaded over different seasons and different businesses to trust their claim.
Thirdly, Internet these days is largely an open market. Even if a business wants to opt for internet advertising, there are many competitors in the market to help you with the same. There is no evidence on what additional benefits a business can achieve if they employ this particular advertising agency or what kind of value and experience does this advertising company brings with itself.
Fourthly, an active reader will immediately realize that sales numbers mentioned in the evidence are in percentages and doesn't tell anything about absolute figures. It can very well be possible that the 10% increase is really small in actual terms and insignificant for other large businesses. They might as well employ a different advertising strategy like advertising through print-media or through TV/radio than through internet.
The company could have mentioned the name of its clients or performances of other furniture agencies, not employing internet advertising, could have been used as a reinforcement. As it stands, businesses will be ill-advised to go for internet advertising based solely on the arguments mentioned above.
Though it seems at the first glance that the internet advertising company has made a good enough claim in suggesting the usefulness of internet services for businesses, but a closer look at the arguments presented reveals leaps of faith, poor reasoning and ill-defined terminology.
There is a lack of empirical evidence to support the advertising company's claim. But, keeping that aside, there is a serious problem with its line of reasoning. The company quotes the example of Furniture Depot to substantiate its claim but this alone is not enough to generalise it for all other businesses. You have to correlate the similar success in Furniture business to all other businesses.
Secondly, if you read the above stimulus with a critical eye you can gauge the weakness of the argument. No data has been given to show whether the increase in sales of Furniture Depot was just a one-off phenomenon or not. No one is going to trust company's claim that increase in sales were a direct result of internet advertising and not because of any other factor. One needs a strong and a data spreaded over different seasons and different businesses to trust their claim.
Thirdly, Internet these days is largely an open market. Even if a business wants to opt for internet advertising, there are many competitors in the market to help you with the same. There is no evidence on what additional benefits a business can achieve if they employ this particular advertising agency or what kind of value and experience does this advertising company brings with itself.
Fourthly, an active reader will immediately realize that sales numbers mentioned in the evidence are in percentages and doesn't tell anything about absolute figures. It can very well be possible that the 10% increase is really small in actual terms and insignificant for other large businesses. They might as well employ a different advertising strategy like advertising through print-media or through TV/radio than through internet.
The company could have mentioned the name of its clients or performances of other furniture agencies, not employing internet advertising, could have been used as a reinforcement. As it stands, businesses will be ill-advised to go for internet advertising based solely on the arguments mentioned above.
