essay - GMAT: Argument 13

The following appeared as part of a campaign to sell advertising time on a local radio station to local businesses:

"The Cumquat Café began advertising on our local radio station this year and was delighted to see its business increase by 10 percent over last year's totals. Their success shows you how you can use radio advertising to make your business more profitable."

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

Answer:
The author tries to convince the readers that the radio advertisement makes the company which advertises on the radio more profitable by citing an example of The Cumquat Cafe which advertised on the radio and made the sales increased by 10 percent last year. However, this argument has two serious flaws.

First, the author doesn't mention the causal relation between the effect of the advertisement and the sales increase of the company. If the company made its sales increased by 10 percent with other ways than advertising on the radio, like acquiring another company, advertising on another media, or just benefiting from a nationwide economic boom, advertising on the radio doesn't have any benefits to its customers. In terms of not showing such kind of information, this argument is so weak that it cannot convince the readers at all.

Second, the argument fails to convince the readers in terms of the lack of the specific information of the radio station. That is, the readers cannot judge whether advertising on the radio is useful or not, because the statements don't include what kind of program the radio station has, and what kind of people listen to the radio -- like young people or old people. These kinds of information are critical for companies to judge whether the advertisement has value for it or not. Therefore, the author should include such kind of information I mentioned above in the statements.

To sum up, the author insists that the advertisement has value for local companies, but he fails to convince the readers because the statements don't have causal relation between the effect and the example it cites, and don't have useful information with which companies can judge the benefit.