The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants."Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 manager in Happy pancake House Restaurants is suggesting that the change from butter to margarine had little change in customers attidute towards the restaurant change. He then continues to explain why he made this conclusion. However, some alternative explanations of the facts that are mentioned could lead to a significantly different conclusion.

The manager is using a survey to explain an issue. He is using date from a survey that indicates that only 2% of the customers have complained for the butter change with margarine in order to say that the other 98% percent is happy. The 2% precent that complained is clearly a fact but we don’t know if the other 98% is happy. For instance maybe half of the customers did not even know that they were served margarine instead of butter or maybe they decided instead of complaining simply to go to another restaurant offering butter. The above mentioned could probably explain why there is a number of people complaining and asking the servers for a change.

Also the manager falls into the group fallacy. He does not mention what is the number of people who do not complain when they eat margarine instead of butter. The number may be small or large or even less than the people who complain. For example if a significant amount of people starts complaining in a store this is something that needs to be taken into consideration. The number of the people who complain, if large enough, could lead to a different outcome than the one stated by the manager. Maybe the customers can distinguish the difference between butter and margarine but the reports from the servers without a clear number of incidents of complain cannot state this fact.

Happy pancake House Restaurants’ manager is making a conclusion about customers’ inability to distinguish butter from margarine but he fails to mention sales increase or decrease due to this change. For example if a report was shown indicating that expenses in Happy pancake House Restaurants went down due to the change, which was the wanted part, but as the expenses went down, the sales went even further down resulting to a loss for the restaurant chain. This report would rival the conclusion the manager makes because it would indicate that not only the customers can distinguish butter from margarine but also they stopped going at these restaurants as a result of this change.

To sum up, the manager’s letter contains some flaws such us supposing that because a small percent of customers did complain the larger percent is happy with this change. He also bases his conclusion to a number of reports without mentioning the exact number. The above could lead to a very different explanation of the facts than the one mentioned in the passage. To support this conclusion the manager should add more evidence that undeniably suggest that this change was not significant and disastrous for the restaurant chain.