According to a survey of 5,000 urban residents, the prevalence of stre
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05 Mar 2021, 13:46
PROMPT
The following appeared in a memorandum from the director of marketing for a pharmaceutical company: “According to a survey of 5,000 urban residents, the prevalence of stress headaches increases with educational level, so that stress headaches occur most often among people with graduate-school degrees. It is well established that, nationally, higher educational levels usually correspond with higher levels of income. Therefore, in marketing our new pain remedy, Omnilixir, we should send free samples primarily to graduate students and to people with graduate degrees, and we should concentrate on advertising in professional journals rather than in general interest magazines.”
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ESSAY
In the prompt, the marketing director of a pharmaceutical is making a claim that their pain remedy, Omnilixir, should be marketed primarily to graduate students or people with graduate degrees. The director makes several weak arguments to try to support this claim, which will be discussed in further detail below.
The first supporting evidence the director provides in marketing to graduate students and individuals with graduate degrees is that a survey of urban residents indicated that the prevalence of stress headaches increases with education levels. There are several things wrong with using this piece as support for the argument. First, a survey, especially one at a relatively small number of 5,000 for an urban area, is not necessarily representative of the population as a whole. Certain groups may be more likely to participate in a survey, so results can be falsely skewed if the survey demographics are not truly representative of the area population as a whole. Even if survey population accurately represents the demographic spreads of the area(s) surveyed, it is wrongfully assumed that the urban population is representative of the population as a whole. Urban residents are not representative of the population as a whole; arguing that this survey translates to the needs of suburban or rural populations is like comparing apples and oranges. On average, urban residents tend to have received higher levels of education than rural populations, so stressors for these populations are likely very different. If the marketing manager were to acknowledge this difference and show that the graduate populace makes up a larger percentage of the population, and could therefore produce a larger number of sales for the company, their argument would become more sound.
Next, the author uses the information that higher levels of education equate to higher levels of income to provide further support that they should market to the graduate populace with free samples and through advertisements in professional journals. This evidence makes more unsupported assumptions to help support the director’s conclusion. It fails to take into account disposable income for its target groups; graduate students themselves are unlikely to have full-time jobs outside of their institutions that would provide them with the disposable income they need to support the purchase of the pain remedy, and while those with graduate degrees likely have a higher income level, they are likely contributing a notable portion of their income to paying off student loans where they too may not have the disposable income to afford the drug.
Because of faults in the directors logic and weak support for their conclusion, the director should re-evaluate the target demographics and advertisement strategies for Omnilixir.