The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books."We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because i

There are many flaws in the recommendation made by the Board of Directors of Monarch Books. They have certainly made dubious assumptions from irrelevant data and lack proper research to bolster their proposal made in the above letter.

They have said that the store has been in business for more than twenty years and attracts large number of customers because of its wide range of books. If it already has a large clientele base then why does it need to open a cafe? Also they do not have any statistics that shows that the people coming to the bookstore would like to visit the cafe too. The assumption that opening a cafetaria will attract a larger crowd has not been buttressed by a research showing that people do want a coffee shop inside the store. The store is known for its wide variety of books. It could aso be possible that opening a coffee shop would direct more crowd towards the cafetaria and therefore decrease the revenue generated from books.

They have also stated that the space for coffee shop could be made by reducing the children's book section because according to a recent census there was a decline in the population of children under age 10. Now this is a very vague reason to reduce the space for the children's section. We do not know clearly by how the the population of children under age 10 has reduced in the area of the store. It is a very generalised statistics which does not give specific results. The national census was probably not taking into account all the places in the country and their result could be biased. Hence it's findings cannot be used directly by the store. One more point to note here is that even if the census was considered what about the children above age 10 who read books? The Directors have given no consideration to them. They perhaps read more than the children aged under ten.

Since the Regal store opened a cafe it does not mean that it's doing better than the Monarch store. There is no analysis which says that the Regal store makes more profit than the Monarch. Also even if it makes more money than Monarch we have no proof which states that the extra revenue of Regal is from the cafe or from the wider variety of books they have than the Monarch.

All the above statements prove that the reasoning given by the Board of Directors for their claim are essentially flawed by a biased and prejudiced thinking. Before proposing the idea of the cafetaria they should have first conducted a survey amongst the people visiting the store whether they would like to visit a coffee shop inside the store. Also they should have found out the number of other cafes in the area and how well they all do. Secondly they should have actually surveyed the number of children visiting the store irrespective of their age. Also a statistical analysis of the number of children under age ten who came to their store before and after the census. This would have given a better understanding of the actual number of children visiting the store and the idea of the revenue generated from the books read by them. They should have also known the reason behind Regal store opening a cafe. Maybe their area was larger. Also the profits from the cafe and the store should have been known and compared to Monarch's before reaching to such a conclusion. If they would have been able to keep the above points in mind then the reasoning of the claim made by them could have been justified in a better way.