Please rate my first AWA essay
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09 Feb 2019, 14:08
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."
Describe how well reasoned you find this argument. In the 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 argument's conclusion. You may also address possible changes in the argument that would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The argument put forth by the internet advertising company that Furniture Depot's sales increased as a direct result of their intervention is deeply flawed.
There could have been other factors that could have contributed to the 10% boost in the sales for Furniture Depot. They could have improved the quality of their products to attract more customers. It could also be possible that they would have made investments in hiring more sales representatives.
From a financial perspective an increase in 10% sales does cannot be considered a reliable indicator of profitability unless the profit margin per product sale is known.
The internet advertising company also makes a bold claim stating that using their service can increase profitability for other businesses' profitability. Since we already established that that we cannot determine with confidence if Furniture depot was actually profitable in the last year that assumption makes the conclusion weak. Even if we do assume that Furniture Depot was profitable with Internet services intervention there it cannot be said with certainty that they would be able to deliver the same results for a business in a different domain. Each market has its own challenges and pitfalls and the results of one cannot be used as a support to prove similar results can be attained in another. Thus, the conclusion that internet advertising company can increase profitability is flawed.