The following appeared as part of an article in the business section of a local newspaper.
“The owners of the Cumquat Café evidently made a good business decision in moving to a new location, as can be seen from the fact that the Café will soon celebrate its second anniversary there. Moreover, it appears that businesses are not likely to succeed at the old location: since the Café’s move, three different businesses — a tanning salon, an antique emporium, and a pet –grooming shop — have occupied its former spot.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The author’s conclusion is that moving to the new location is a good decision of the owners of Cumquat Café. To substantiate this conclusion, the author points out that the Café will soon celebrate its second anniversary at the new location. Also, the author reasons that the old location is not good for business development of the Café since three different businesses have occupied such spot after the Café’s move. Close scrutiny, however, reveals several logical flaws of this argument.
To begin with, the author turns on the assumption that the second anniversary in the new place is a sign of business success of the Café. However, it is not necessarily the case. Lacking more sufficient information about the operating condition of the Café, I have good reason to doubt whether it can attract enough customers and maintain a stable revenue in the place. Probably, the Café have decided to celebrate its second anniversary there only because the owners want to attract people’s attention to the it. That is to say, the mere fact that the Café have remained operating in the new place for two years, in itself, does not suffice to draw the conclusion that it has achieved business success there.
Moreover, the author fails to establish the causal relationship between the old location and the business failure of the three later businesses. Unless the author could consider and rule out other factors for determining the business failure such as haste price policy, uneffective (ineffective) labor organization, out-of-date technique and so forth, it is totally possible that those businesses failed because of these factors rather than the location. If true, the author’s prediction about the old location would be seriously undermined.
