The following appeared in a memo from the business manager of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States."For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however,

It may be true that by limiting amount of inventory stocked a company can reduce its expenses. But the author’s argument that the company can increase profits by concentrating on domestic cheeses and by discontinuing stocking of some varieties of imported cheese, rest on questionable assumptions.

Citing that domestic cheeses were most sold at new store is only specific for that particular store, it’s not clear how author has generalized this information for whole of United States. Various factor can be involved in high sales of domestic cheddar cheeses at the new store. For example, people living in neighborhood of this store might prefer cheddar cheeses or maybe this store is geographically close to Wisconsin and hence cheddar cheeses are available for lower prices. This phenomenon does in no way represent cheese preferences of rest of United States, the author should have mentioned few more diverse store sales or averages sales across all its stores in United States.

Additionally the author next cites about a magazine survey of its subscribers, but does this magazine's subscriber base represent residents of United States at large? It is highly likely that subscribers of this magazines would be people or companies interested in Variety of Cheeses, or anyone who has keen interest in cheeses, It has not even been mentioned if this magazine is circulated in whole of United States. If the survey is conducted on a biased set of readers then this survey cannot be used to support the author's claim.

Even if it is assumed that Cheeses of World magazine has a fully diverse subscriber base, there has been no mention of reliability of this survey. The validity of survey relies on many factors such as, what kind of questions were asked, if a question is framed as "What kind of cheese would you prefer early morning cheese from another country or the true American cheese", readers could get biased. Unless the survey is fully valid, reliable and conducted on diverse groups of people, it cannot be used to effectively back the author's argument.

If possible the company should conduct its own survey to ensure its validity and in addition mention highest sales across all its stores to make a stronger argument, further there could be many more ways to improve profits, discontinuing some variety’s may in fact not be the best option, as it may loose consumers to other stores that stock international cheeses. All these options should be looked into to improve the author’s argument.