The following appeared in a memo from the marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores."Five years ago, Fish Emporium started advertising in the magazine Exotic Pets Monthly. Their stores saw sales increase by 15 percent. The three Fish Emporium stores in Gul

The marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores (TDPS) recommends placing store ads in Exotic Pets Monthly magazine. This step will supposedly lead to reverse of the current negative trend and increase in store's proceeds. The conclusion is buttressed by evidence which should be carefully scrutinized in order to give a comprehensive estimation of the soundness of the argument.

The first evidence which is given to us is that five years ago Fish Emporium stores (FES) started to give ads in the magazine Exotic Pets Monthly. The author attributes the stores' success solely to the advertising in the magazine. However, some other unstated factors may lead to this success, for instance, Fish Emporium may use other sources of advertising such as the internet, TV and the radio. Moreover, the chain may have a wise and flexible financial policy which attracts new customers and keeps old ones. Thus probably other factors contribute or even caused the stores' prosperity.

Furthermore, the arguer suggests repeating the Fish Emporium experience. However, we are not sure that advertising in the magazine led to the FES prosperity; however, even if Fish Emporium's success is caused by the Exotic Pets Monthly advertising, perhaps conditions and circumstances today and five years ago are not the same. Moreover, the stores themselves may differ strikingly from each other and thus policy which brings success to one store chain will not lead to analogous result to the second chain. For instance, we may assume from stores' names that Fish Emporium is specialized on fish probably, exotic ones, consequently, it is logical to place its ads in the magazine which promotes Exotic Pets. At the same time, Top Dog Pet Stores seems to be devoted to dogs which rarely may be considered as exotic pets and thus the TDPS's ads in the magazine may not find its target group. In other words, the implementation of proposed policy may not bring desired results due to changed circumstances and dissimilarities of the chains.

Finally, the argument claims that placing ads in the magazine will “reverse the recent trend of falling sales” and TDPS will start to make profits. However, may we say that only reason of the decline is lack of advertising? Probably, other factors contributed to the fall. For instance, unwise management or badly trained staff may do it and fulfilment of the proposal will not address to these problems and thus reverse is highly questionable. Thus author's expectation that the stores will begin to make profit is dubious as well.

In conclusion, the director of TDPS believes that repetition of five-years-old policy of a rival company will inescapably tail the same results. However, the writer has failed to prove that Fish Emporium success is caused by the magazine advertising and that these two store chains and circumstances are similar enough to bring the same result. Thus the argument is unwarranted.