The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Nature’s Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.

“Previous experience has shown that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build our next new store in Plainsville, which has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville’s schoolchildren are required to participate in a ‘fitness for life’ program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age.”

The argument is based on a memo written by the vice president of a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products named Nature’s Way. The vice president of Nature’s Way recommends that the company should build a new store in Plainsville because this place has residents who are highly concerned with leading healthy lifestyles. He has supported his argument by citing information about sale of sports products, the situation of local health club and a program called “fitness for life” in schools. However, none of these evidence lends credible support to the recommendation.

In the first place, the sale of running shoes and exercise apparel makes no sense to the conclusion that the residents would be interested in buying Nature’s Way products. People of Plainsville might pay more attention to exercise rather than health diet. It is highly possible that exercise apparel happens to be fashionable at the moment. Even if the sales of these products can represent the residents’ enthusiastic attitude towards keeping themselves healthy, there is no information that shows that their passion towards exercise would continue or increase. Hence, this evidence is not strong enough to conclude the argument. On the contrary, there is a chance of their believing that as a result of regular exercise they are sufficiently fit and healthy and do not need a health diet.

Secondly, the popularity of the local health club is little indication that Nature’s Way will earn a profit from a store on Plainsville. There is no evidence that shows that the poor business of local health club five years ago was due to little concern of residents towards health. In the past the club might have had a high membership fee or poor quality of equipment or untrained instructors and therefore, people did not go to it to exercise any more. Moreover, now the success of one health club cannot represent other clubs also. May be the local club is doing well now due to change in its management and improvement in the whole quality of the club. The author has not given convincing arguments in the support of his recommendation.

The third point is the fact that a certain fitness program is mandatory for Plainsville’s schoolchildren. This fact accomplishes nothing towards bolstering the recommendation. The author has not thought about the other side of this point that students who participate in a “fitness for life” program might not buy food from Nature’s Way. Moreover, they exercise a lot by playing football, baseball etc to keep themselves healthy. Hence, they are not the customers of the health diet.

Hence, the author’s recommendation is based entirely on some assumptions and the author has failed to support his assumptions with concrete evidence. The author should have analyzed the market and understood the attitude of residents in Plainsville. He should have talked to people who are the health club’s members, exercise regularly, buy exercise clothes etc. In addition, other information, such as the detailed situation of club, taste of children and average income of people in Plainsville would have helped to take a decision.