Review and suggestions appreciated..........pplllzzzz (1st argument)

[sreekanth81]

Argument: “The potential of WXYZ to increase your sales can be seen from the experiences of Alphaville Motors last year. Regular advertising on WXYZ prime listening hours greatly increased public awareness of Alphaville Motors. Before Alphaville Motors started advertising on WXYZ, an independent market research team found that only 10 percent of the randomly surveyed group of 2,000 local residents could identify Alphaville Motors when asked to name local car dealers. After three months of advertising on WXYZ, 30 percent of respondents from a second survey named Alphaville Motors when asked to name local car dealers”

Q. The following appeared in a memorandum from the sales department at the WXYZ radio corp. to marketing department of Fun Times restaurants.

A. The aforesaid memorandum sent to ‘Fun Times Restaurant’ gives an impression that it has been drafted very carefully taking into account all the details needed to impress a prospective customer, but when analysed thoroughly it does seem to have few flaws.

The main flaw in the argument is that, it states after Alphaville Motors advertised in WXYZ the number of local residents who knew about the company increased, but there isn’t any detail mentioned whether the sale of the company increased because of the advertisement or not. Being drafted by the Sales department this detail should have been mentioned, as it is the main factor that any prospective customer would like to know and is missed in the argument.

Next flaw is that, it has been stated that ‘regular advertising during prime listening times will greatly increase public awareness’. There isn’t any mention of the timing that the author is referring to and also the programs that have maximum TRP rating and that are sure to fetch business. These details could have strengthened the argument, because each channel might have different prime listening times and there might be a few well rated or popular programs that might have wider coverage.

Finally there is no proper evidence to state that the popularity of Alphaville Motors has increased after advertising through WXYZ radio. There is no mention of the research firm that have conducted the survey and the credibility of the survey result is under question. Neither method in which the survey was carried out nor the type of respondents or samples chosen has been clearly stated, this can’t be taken as a viable proof to show that the popularity of the company has increased because of the advertisement.

To sum up, if the argument was able to clarify all the concerns stated above, it would have been lot more persuasive and pretty difficult to refute.

[MBA_to_be]

My thoughts:

1. Your first/main reasoning that the author fails to mention actual sales figures to demonstrate increase in sales immediately after WXYZ advertising, is a good one.

2. A second strong flaw could be the one about the samples chosen in the survey (that you mention briefly in the conclusion and could expand). For example, the author does not mention if the second survey was conducted among the same 2000 people present in the first survey.

3. Also, the author does not mention the number of samples in the second survey. If the number of total samples are less than the first survey, then an increase of 20% does not mean that more people are now aware of Alphaville motors.

4. The reasoning about the prime listing times could be the fourth point.

[ketan811]

Just to add to above points:

You can consider faulty analogy: Increase in sales of motor company does not guarantee sales in restaurant business..

[sreekanth81]

Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback and suggestions........any other suggestions are also welcome.