The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants."Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little im

The argument claims that there has been a change from butter to margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants and little impact is observed. The argument asserts that a number customers do not complain when they are given margarine instead of butter. Thus, they either do not understand the difference or used butter as a general name. Stated in this way, the argument misdirects the reality and provides a distorted view of the situation. The conclusion of the argument relies on assertions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

First, the argument claims that only two percent of customers have complained about this change. However, there is no information regarding the method that is followed to reach this conclusion is presented in the argument. Sample size and the number of different restaurants where the research was conducted are important factors to evaluate the reliability of the conclusions. There might be the case that they conducted a survey in only one restaurant or in one area, and reach this conclusion. In this case, the results should not be considered as valid. Moreover, it is important to know that these survey was conducted by whom. For instance, if the restaurant managers conducted the survey, then they might prefer biased methods to support the change since changing butter to margarine increases their profitability. Without convincing details about the scope and method of the survey, the conclusion that only two percent of customers complain about the change remains more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.

Second, even if only two percent of the customers directly complains about the change, the argument do not consider the customers who did not explain any dissatisfaction but give up frequenting the restaurants. These people might not want to argue with restaurant managers, or might not find explaining their dissatisfaction necessary. There might be the case, these people might prefer not to come this restaurant chain. In order to evaluate the merit of this claim, number of customers before and after the change should be considered. If there is a decrease in the number of customer, then it might be concluded that there is more customers who dislike from the change than it is estimated by managers. Moreover, the decrease in the number of customer mig ht show the extend of impact of change on customers.

Finally, the argument asserts that number of customers do not express anything when they are given margarine instead of butter. Hence, the argument claims that whether they do not know difference or use butter as a general name. This is again very weak and undeveloped argument since the argument does not demonstrate any clear connection with not knowing the name and complaining about the service. In addition, the argument asserts number of people do not complain about these situation; however, it does not provide any clear statistics regarding this claim. Moreover, the clientele might understand the difference; but they do not care. They might be indifferent about using the butter or margarine, or they may be not desire to spend time with discussing the waiters to get butter instead of margarine. Consequently, the statement regarding the connection between complaints and not knowing the difference is not explained well in the argument.

To sum up, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and therefore its unconvincing. In order to assess the merits of a certain decision, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. In this case, decrease in the number of clientele is important information. Without these statistics, the argument would remain unsubstantiated and open to debate.