The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores."Because of declining profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore's ten movie-rental stores. Raising prices is not a good option, since

The author here argues that reduction of inventory and working hours and other operating expenses at Movies Galore movie- rental stores will lead to improvements in profits, based on the fact that introduction of these policies at a particular branch has seen very few customer complaints. However, stated in this way, the author fails to mention several key assumptions and his argument reveals multiple instances of poor reasoning, due to the lack of proper evidence to support his findings, thereby rendering the argument incomplete and unsubstantiated.

If any establishment shows a decline in profit, the most common panacea to such a problem would be to raise the price of the commodities. Granted, that Movies Galore does not wish to stray away from its promise of offering low prices, but such a concept is relative and dependent on the price at the other rental stores. It may so happen that due to a shift in the economy, other movie rentals have all increased the price of movies substantially. If Movies Galore continues to sell movies at unchanged rates, they will soon find themselves at a disadvantage. Say that a competitor to Movies Galore initially sold a movies at a price five dollars more than that at Movies Galore. Now if current evidence shows that the same competitor is selling movies at ten dollars more than at Movies Galore, one may conclude that Movies Galore could very well increase their own prices by a certain extent, to counter the problem of declining profits, while still offering movies at low prices, thereby weakening the author’s inference about the inability of Movies Galore to raise the price of goods sold.

Next the author claims that since very few customer complaints have been received regarding the policy changes mentioned in the argument, hence the modifications made at the store in Marston can be applied at all Movies Galore branches. But, it may be so that closing the store at 6 pm rather than at 9 pm is of very little consequence in Marston, as perhaps in that particular locality, the store always had maximum footfall during early afternoons, and thus keeping the store open in that locality till 9 pm is not justifiable. However if evidence shows that the majority of locations where Movies Galore is present showed maximum sales during evening hours, especially in the region 6 pm to 9 pm, it would imply that closing the stores early at those locations would lead to a further slump in profit, thus proving the author’s suggestions incorrect, further weakening the argument.

Furthermore, a similar occurrence might take place with respect to the stocking of DVDs released within the last five years. Fewer complaints may have been received as it may happen that the residents of Marston prefer to watch the latest movies. But that may not be true for the other nine localities. The author here has thus simply assumed that similar conditions exist in all the localities and thus a universal solution is valid. To address both the problems related to store timings and collection of DVDs, one must conduct a proper survey to evaluate whether the suggested modifications are suitable for all the other localities. If the results of this survey corroborate the author’s unstated assumptions, then the argument will be strengthened to a great extent, else it would go on to discard another of the author’s spurious assumptions.

Thus, in conclusion, it may be inferred that in its current, unmodified form, the argument is unpersuasive. Some very pertinent questions were raised regarding the correctness of the author’s assumptions, the merits of which could only be judged by means of proper evidence, either in support of or against it. The studies suggested above will thus conclusively prove whether the author’s conclusion is valid or not.