The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore a chain of movie rental stores In order to reverse the recent decline in our profits we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore s ten movie rental stores Since we are famous fo

The owner of Movies Galore believes that in order to raise the profits, his/her stores should work in fewer hours to cut down the operating expenses and also eliminate all movies released more than five years ago. This conclusion is based on a premise that the same strategy was seemingly viable in one of his/her stores, so it can be pursued in other chain stores either. The author needs to provide answers to several vital questions in order to illustrate the argument.

First, the author needs to ask whether implementing these strategies would result in more advantages than the disadvantages. For instance, the author should ask whether losing the customers who rent the movies produced more than five years ago would be a significant loss or not. It is possible that the main customers are comprised of the fans of old movies. It is also possible that new movies are expensive and people prefer to rent the older ones. By eliminating this opportunity for the customers to rent the old movies, the costumer trend might decline more gravely than the past.

Secondly, still enumerating the disadvantages of the author’s recommendation, it is possible that although the operating costs is reduced, by closing the stores sooner, the fewer customers obviously can rent the movies from the stores. Therefore the profits would decrease simultaneously. Therefore the author needs seriously to ask how much drop of the customers would the owner face by limiting the time that stores are open.

Even if all the previous answers lend credence to the author's conclusion, yet thirdly, it might not work as well for the other ones. The customers might go to the Marston branch between 6:00 pm and 9:00 pm, while the other stores might have a pique of customers further than the limited period and this would exact a high prize on the other stores. Furthermore, the author needs to ask is it efficient and durable enough to only reduce the operating expenses. The declining trend might be quite grave that by the temporary reduction in the expenses, it might face the owner with the bankruptcy.

In short, the current shape of the argument is confusing as the argument is replete with the ambiguous conditions. As discussed, there are several unaddressed questions whose answers are seriously needed to clarify the argument. Since none of them is provided by the author, the conclusion cannot be tenable.