Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily

The following appeared as part of a promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette to grocery stores in the Marston area:
“Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. Consider the results of a study conducted last month. Thirty sale items from a store in downtown Marston were advertised in The Gazette for four days. Each time one or more of the 30 items was purchased, clerks asked whether the shopper had read the ad. Two-thirds of the 200 shoppers asked answered in the affirmative. Furthermore, more than half the customers who answered in the affirmative spent over $100 at the store.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.


As part of promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette, argument opines that advertising the reduced price of selected products in the Daily Gazette should increase sales of grocery stores in the Marston area. The argument is substantially flawed because it draws broad conclusion from debatable evidences offering dubious support for its claim.

The argument refers to a study in which items from a downtown Marston's store were advertised, derives its conclusion from the results of this study and applies it to the rest of the stores in Marston. Argument unwarrantedly assumes that this one store in downtown under study is typical of all stores in Marston. However, the store under study, being located in downtown, is accessible to patrons from all over the town and thus, cannot be representative of a store in suburb which caters only to limited shoppers residing in that particular area. Considering varying conditions of different stores at Marston in terms of customer base, location and products offered, all stores may not be benefitted by advertising in the Daily Gazette. Had the argument limited its conclusion to the stores in downtown, it would still have made a convincing case.

Arguments asserts that, out of 200 consumers who purchased one or more of the 30 items advertised in the Daily Gazette ,130 have read the advertisement and more than half of these 130 shoppers have spent more than $100 at this store. The correlation between spending more than $100 and buying one or more of the advertised product does not imply causality. For instance, if average spending at this store is $100 per consumer, then these consumers have spent just the average amount which otherwise also they could have spent. Having provided inconclusive information, argument draws untenably strong conclusion that advertising in the Daily Gazette will help in increasing the sales. In order to substantiate its claim, argument could have compared the weekly or monthly sales at the store under study so as to determine the increase in sales caused by advertising in the Daily Gazette.

In summary, argument is neither sound nor persuasive and fails to convey a compelling reasons for stores in Marston to advertise in the Daily Gazette.