The following appeared in a memorandum written by the assistant manager of a store that sells gourmet food items from various countries"A local wine store made an interesting discovery last month: it sold more French than Italian wine on days when it play

In the argument above, the assistant manager claims that,they will increase their profit and predict more accurately the stock levels of the items by putting food specialties from one particular country on sale for a week at a time and playing music from that country. The premise of this argument is that a local wine store applied this method and succeeded to boost its sales. However, the argument is flawed because without any evident and support it assumes that the same method will work for the food seller in the same manner.

First, the products that the food seller has are different from those of the local wine store. The wine buyers should not be treated like food buyers, since they consider wine selection a part of their intellectual hobby. Thus, they are more open to be affected by the ethnic music played during shopping. Whereas, the food buying is a part of daily or weekly routine and the gourmet food buyers have different characteristics from the wine buyers, and there should be alternative methods other than playing music. Therefore, it is not obvious that the same method will apply for the food seller.

Second,the argument does not consider other factors such as product discounts or special campaigns offered during specific weeks. For instance, local wine owner may offer special discounts in the certain weeks for Italian wines and French wines in addition to playing music. The argument above accepts the surge in sales of local wine shop as it stands without giving profound evidences and without considering the root causes.

Moreover, to make the argument more valid, the assistant manager should identify the properties of the customers and decide how to affect the customers while shopping, because the food buyers might require other methods to be influenced to make more shopping. Furthermore, the assistant manager should consider and investigate other causes that might lead to hike in sales of local wine shop. Maybe, there are other factors resulting in increase in sales as cited above, special discounts and campaigns. Also,assistant manager does not put forth any evidence regarding the sustainability of the method, that is to to say, to make precise predictions for stock levels assistant manager have to be ensured that the playing music method will work persistently.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed because it leaves out several key issues such as the customer types, factors other than playing music and sustainability of the method. If author included these items while reasoning his argument, the argument would be more thorough and convincing.