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Learn what truly sets the UC Riverside MBA apart and how it helps in your professional growth
06 Jan 2021, 08:47
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''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.''
In the text, the author is arguing that a grocery store should advertise in a newspaper based on arguments that are weak, unclear and incomplete. The proof used is somewhat irrelevant and is not doing the job of supporting the main argument of this text which is : Advertising will help increase sales. Here’s why.
Firstly, the main argument in the text is that advertising will help increase your sales. In the following lines where the author is trying to prove this point, we cannot see any kind of mention or numbers proving that sales were increased. The whole argument relies on a survey that was poorly done. It is used as proof of that advertising works but was not carried in a scientific way and never showed an actual increase in sales. Also, the results entirely depend on the clerk’s ability to notice what the customer purchased, asking the question and remembering/writing down the answer. Additionally, nowhere in the text can we see a mention of what kind of store this experiment was carried in, making the number of customers or the average value of the transaction irrelevant. To be used as a convincing proof, this survey needs a lot more info to make this reliable. Too many important facts are left unknown.
Second, the argument is ill conceived because we do now know how many usual customers the store where the survey was carried is getting each day. We have no information about foot traffic, average sales or even if this store even resembles the store to whom the advertisement is offered. The author is also disregarding the fact that groceries are stores of habits where people go regularly and would probably not change their routine if a store a few blocks away had a better price on a few items on a specific day.
Next, the argument does not specify which kinds of articles were on sale in the store where the survey was carried. It would have been very easy for a store to advertise eggs or milk, which are products that people buy very frequently and say the ads worked because they sold eggs that weekend. This is disregarding the fact that these products are already selling at high volumes and not showing that there was any kind of increase in sales for that ad.
A convincing proof for this argument would include examples of similar stores in similar cities showing the real effect of the advertising : Numbers to show a clear increase in sales. In conclusion, as it stands, the argument made by the author is flawed for the reasons stated above.
In the text, the author is arguing that a grocery store should advertise in a newspaper based on arguments that are weak, unclear and incomplete. The proof used is somewhat irrelevant and is not doing the job of supporting the main argument of this text which is : Advertising will help increase sales. Here’s why.
Firstly, the main argument in the text is that advertising will help increase your sales. In the following lines where the author is trying to prove this point, we cannot see any kind of mention or numbers proving that sales were increased. The whole argument relies on a survey that was poorly done. It is used as proof of that advertising works but was not carried in a scientific way and never showed an actual increase in sales. Also, the results entirely depend on the clerk’s ability to notice what the customer purchased, asking the question and remembering/writing down the answer. Additionally, nowhere in the text can we see a mention of what kind of store this experiment was carried in, making the number of customers or the average value of the transaction irrelevant. To be used as a convincing proof, this survey needs a lot more info to make this reliable. Too many important facts are left unknown.
Second, the argument is ill conceived because we do now know how many usual customers the store where the survey was carried is getting each day. We have no information about foot traffic, average sales or even if this store even resembles the store to whom the advertisement is offered. The author is also disregarding the fact that groceries are stores of habits where people go regularly and would probably not change their routine if a store a few blocks away had a better price on a few items on a specific day.
Next, the argument does not specify which kinds of articles were on sale in the store where the survey was carried. It would have been very easy for a store to advertise eggs or milk, which are products that people buy very frequently and say the ads worked because they sold eggs that weekend. This is disregarding the fact that these products are already selling at high volumes and not showing that there was any kind of increase in sales for that ad.
A convincing proof for this argument would include examples of similar stores in similar cities showing the real effect of the advertising : Numbers to show a clear increase in sales. In conclusion, as it stands, the argument made by the author is flawed for the reasons stated above.
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