A recent study of our customers suggests that our company is wasting the money it spends on its patented Endure manufacturing process, which ensures that our socks are strong enough to last for two years.

A recent study of our customers suggests that our company is wasting the money it spends on its patented Endure manufacturing process, which ensures that our socks are strong enough to last for two years. We have always advertised our use of the Endure process, but the new study shows that despite our socks’ durability, our average customer actually purchases new Dura-Socks every three months. Furthermore, our customers surveyed in our largest market, northeastern United States cities, say that they most value Dura-Socks’ stylish appearance and availability in many colors. These findings suggest that we can increase our profits by discontinuing use of the Endure manufacturing process.

At first glance, it may seem quite logical with the argument in the memo that Bower Builders could increase its profit by discontinuing the use of the old manufacturing process. However, to adequately evaluate this argument， we need to answer several questions that could strengthen it.

The first question we need to answer is how the new study is organized. The author simply brings forward customers purchasing new Dura-socks every three months, much shorter than its endurance, while there is a strong possibility that this study targets those customers who have a strong desire to purchase products from Bower Builders. It can be easily understood that for this group they would consume products fast without other choices. on the contrary, it ignores those potential customers that might be attracted by the advertisement to have a try since we know from the passage that endurance is a major character. To strengthen its argument, a further survey is needed to get aware of how many people are attracted by Endure process.

Besides, the detailed information of the survey in the northeastern United States cities also needs to be questioned. The author holds the opinion the survey is believable, while firstly, we are confused about how many people were interviewed in the survey.  In an extreme situation, only 10 customers were asked with questions and the argument would be weakened much even all of them told they were in favor of appearance and variable colors. Besides, the findings on the appearance could hardly show whether people don not care about the Endure process. It might just because of too many advertisements that make people take the endurance for granted and ignore to express it during the survey.

Even we tentatively admit that the previous questions are answered, we still need to answer whether simple data can represent the whole country. The last survey was only done in the largest market. Other places might have different results since for those people living in the countryside who can hardly get in touch with northeastern United States cities, they may pay more attention to the size and the quality of the product. It decides how long they can use the product. Hence a national survey is required to evaluate the argument.

Last but not the least, we need to answer the question of whether there are better ways to increase profit. We can hardly increase profit in a way which may damage the effects of previous advertisements. To some extent, we can increase more research funds, providing better products than other competitors to increase profit. More  advertisements are also suitable since more people may acquaint our products.

Clearly, those questions above need to be answered to evaluate the argument.