AWA Feedback: Rhyme & Others...

Rhyme,
Could you critique this AWA from PPrep that I wrote today... Verbal was bad... did (Q49, V36) 700.

History of tests:
PPrep Jul 08th, 2006: 710 (Q48, V40)
GPrep Jul 16th, 2006: 670 (Q44, V38)
GPrep Aug 12th, 2006: 690 (Q48, V38)
PPrep Aug 20th, 2006: 700 (Q49, V36)


Any tips for verbal for my last 5 weeks before G-Day? Seems like my score is dropping in verbal... SC is improving quite a bit.. just 1 incorrect, CR and RC were a disaster... 5 incorrect in CR and 5 in RC.
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The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles.

"In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Café, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires."

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your 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 conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.


Essay:
The argument presented in the magazine is neither well reasoned nor persuasive. The article takes data which by itself does not indicate the conclusion drawn by the article and presents it without any supporting evidence. There are quite a few reasons why the argument presented is not valid. The important reasons are outlined below.
The first reason why I belive that this argument is not valid, is the use of data which byitself is presented without any comparative analysis and correlation with the current lifestyles of the consumers. For example, the data presented regarding the Heart's Delight store may seem to justify the conclusion drawn. However, the fact that a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content are available at the store, does not by any mean provide a causal relationship to the conclusion drawn. The Heart's Delight store is a organic store and cheeses if made from organic sources are bound to contain materials which are not processed and therefore more richer. This by no means indicates that today's consumers are less concerned about the intake of fatty cheeses. To draw the conclusion that the article draws based on this data, additional information regarding the selection of wares stacked in the same store a decade ago, has to be presented. The argument presented would be more persuasive if it also contains data regarding the change in the lifestyles of consumers from a decade ago. This would mean data regarding the exercise routines, awareness about the deleterious affects of a high-fat diet and other relevant factors which may offset the affects of their intake habits.
The second data point that the author/authors present in the article relates to the success of the owners of the House of Beef restaurant as compared to the owners of the Good Earth Cafe. This data absolutely does not have any bearing on the conclusion drawn without additional information pertaining to the change in the number of customers of each restaurant over the last decade. Even if that information is provided, it only strengthens the conclusion that the article draws and does not provide the complete picture. There could be miriad of reasons why one restaurant is successful while the other is not. It could be due to a new fad in diets such as the Atkins diet, which leads to financial success for the owners. It could also be due to the drop in the quality in the food wares at the Good Earth Cafe. In short, unless clear data is presented to support the data regarding the two restaurants the article has no means to draw the conclusion relating to the change in the diet habits from a decade ago.
In summary I do not find the argument present persuasive and well reasoned. The article draws conclusions from data, which without additional supporting information are simply isolated facts. Therefore the author needs to provide more data and present the connecting bridges for the facts to reason out the argument.
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"A business should not be held responsible for providing customers with complete information about its products or services; customers should have the responsibility of gathering information about the products or services they may want to buy."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Essay:
I strongly disagree with the opinion stated above. Businesses, in my view, cannot afford to behave in any manner which may be perceived wrongly by its customers. Businesses provide a service or product to a customer to fullfill a consumer's needs and requirements. The only way a consumer can make an informed decision of whether a service or product satisfies the requirements, is by taking all available information and evaluating two comparable products. If businesses do not provide complete information about their products and services, the consumer has no way to compare and evaluate two products. This may cause a larger loss to businesses than consumers. The consumers have no way of comprehensively gathering all relevant information related to a product. A consumer has no incentive to spend time to gather the requisite information. For a consumer to change over to a different product would require the consumers to spend time to gather information. This is a dis-incentive for the consumer. Any decision by businesses which is perceived as a dis-incentive by consumers will definately not be popular with consumers. Therefore, any business that does not provide customers with complete information is doing so at its own financial peril and has a grave danger of being in financial distress in the future due to loss of customers.
A second aspect of this argument is the unethical practice of businesses to intentionally hide the dire affects of some of its products. If the argument were to be accepted, businesses would be more than likely to hide information that causes harm to its own customers and blame other factors for the damage caused. Take for example, the tobacco industry lawsuits which have been going on for the last decade. In the early 80's the tobacco industry blatantly lied about the ill-effects of cigarette smoking and blamed the natural tendency of smokers to get cancer. However, they failed to acknowledge that cigarette smoking was the biggest factor causing the cancer. Such instances of misconduct by the industry businesses, belie the argument, leading me to believe that the argument should be refuted.
A second example of unethical behaviour by companies is the affect of the drug Vioxx marketed by the company Merck. In the early 2000's although it become clear in the lab tests by the scientists at Merck that Vioxx had grave side-affects which may cause heart failures, the company did not present these findings in their research papers and went on to market the drug. As it is now evident, a large number of consumers did end up having problems with the drug and in some cases caused fatalities due to the drug.
In conclusion, I strongly disagree with the opinion stated above, not only because the consumers are ill-served by such a principle, but also because it is not in the interests of businesses themselves to adopt such a principle.