The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of marketing at Dura-Sock, Inc."A recent study of our customers suggests that our company is wasting the money it spends on its patented Endure manufacturing process, which ensures that our socks ar

It might sound wise, for the Dura-Sock to suspend the Endure manufacturing process, however, the author's argument is rife with assumptions and the article is not convincing enough.

First, in stating that average customer purchase new Dura-Socks every three months, the author assumes that average customer only use those socks for three months and will discard them after purchasing the new socks. However, it might turn out that many customers will like to keep their original socks while purchasing new socks from Dura-Sock company for their children. In this case, if the Endure manufacturing process is discontinued, and the life span of socks decrease, these customers will be able to discover that their own socks do not have the equal durability as the advertising suggests. Consequently, these customers might choose never to purchase from Dura-Socks again and the company might suffer financial loss, in contradiction with the prediction in the argument. To strengthen his/her argument, the author might need to conduct an additional survey investigating whether customers would like to keep old socks.

In addition, the author makes an assumption that customers prefer stylish appearance and multicolor over durability based on a survey done in northeastern United States cities. However, it might be possible that northeastern citizens are generally wealthier than people from other places and they change their socks more frequently than others. Thus they might be indifferent to the durability of socks, but this doesn't necessarily mean that customers from other regions are also indifferent of durability. Also, the author might need to offer information about the survey format. It would considerably undermine the argument if it turned out that the survey was done only to young people who compared to others would lay greater emphasis on fashionable styles and appearance or that the survey only offer limited options as potential features of socks that customers would prefer, and it happened that durability was not offered as an option in the survey. Both cases suggest that the survey lacks validity in estimating customers' preference.

Building upon the previous assumption that customers are indifferent to the durability, the author believes that discontinuing use of the Endure manufacturing process would cut cost of production and thereby increase profits. The assumption is that the sales would not be influenced by the suspension. However, the Dura-Sock fails to improve the appearance as well as the colors of socks, which will not result in an increase of sales, and the decrease of durability might actually decrease the sales of Dura-Socks. Furthermore, if the Dura-Sock continues to advertise the use of Endure process while in fact the process has been discontinued, it would considerably undermine the reputation of the company and if customers find out that the advertising is deceptive, we can expect a sudden eclipse of Dura-Sock's sales. On the other hand, if the Dura company is honest enough to discontinue the advertising of Endure process, the customers will know that Dura-Sock could be just a usual sock-producing company and their socks have no unique features. Consequently, the lack of publicity would equally diminish Dura-Sock sales and profits, in contradiction of the argument.

In conclusion, it might be wise to suspend the Endure manufacturing process as it would decrease cost of production, but the author might need additional evidence to support his argument.