The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants Recently butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the south western United States This change however has had little impact

The author’s conclusion about the customers of Happy Pancake House restaurants being unaware of the difference between butter and margarine may seem logical at first, but is based on certain assumptions which make it weaker.

The hypothesis of the little impact the replacement of butter with margarine had on customers does not take into account whether these people had already started substituting butter with margarine in their normal diet. Inferring that these people do not know how to distinguish between the two would not be wise as they might intake butter at their homes, thus being aware of the difference. There might be possibilities that both the spreads are indistinguishable from each other and the pancakes with margarine tastes the same or even better than that with butter; hence lesser complaints from people. Moreover, margarine might have added advantages over butter, thus people concerned with their health might have welcomed this new change optimistically.

Nevertheless, the argument fails to shed light whether other similar pancake shops have replaced butter with margarine. If introduced successfully by other shops before Happy Pancake House, chances were there that people might had already accustomed to the change; thus reduced rates of complaints. Moreover, the author vaguely states “many servers” reporting the lack of complaints from customers. To make the argument more cogent, the author should have given us the number of servers working at Happy Pancake House and the measure of reliability of their words. It might also be possible that people in South Western United States are fond of margarine, hence an overall reduced complain rates.

Lastly, complaints from only 2 percent customers does not indicate the overall acceptance rate the margarine by others. The author should have included opinions and feedback from customers who were both happy and unsatisfied with the change. 98 people out of 100 not complaining about the change does not shed light on the happiness of the customers – it might just be that people had accepted without trouble. Had the author included the statistics from a survey conducted to shed light on the acceptance rate of margarine by the customers, it would have strengthened the argument.

Thus, the author needs to incorporate all the above alternative explanations in his argument which would make his theory more reliable and logical.