Nature’s Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products, is opening its next franchise in the town of Plainsville.

Nature’s Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products, is opening its next franchise in the town of Plainsville. The store should prove to be very successful: Nature’s Way franchises tend to be most profitable in areas where residents lead healthy lives, and clearly Plainsville is such an area. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. Finally, Plainsville’s schoolchildren represent a new generation of potential customers: these schoolchildren are required to participate in a fitness-for-life program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

In the argument the author points out that residents in Plainsville lead healthy lifestyles because the sales of some sports clothing are relatively high compared to the past, and thus Nature’s Way will definitely be successful in selling health-related products in this area. The author then suggests that schoolchildren will be the potential customers after participation in a program. However, some unwarranted assumptions may render the argument unconvincing.

The first problematic assumption is that sales of health products are more successful in places where people have healthy lifestyles. Yet this might not be the case, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps people with better health awareness are less inclined to buy health-related products, since such products might contain some ingredients that can have adverse impact on our bodies. Or perhaps the residents already have very good physical conditions and disease rarely occurred among them in the past. Consequently, health-related products will not be so popular.

Secondly, even assuming that high profits have strong connection with residents’ lifestyles, it is too hasty to conclude that Plainsville’s residents are really living healthy lives simply based on sales of sports clothes and number of healthcare courses. It is quite possible that the local people wear sports clothes just as a daily habit rather than for exercising purposes, and the rise in sales might be attributable to the town’s increasing population. Besides, residents’ active participation in can be explained by factors other than health awareness. Perhaps the health clubs or related classes have offered more discounts, making the expenses lower than before, and thus attract more consumers. Without ruling out such possibilities, the author cannot justifiably conclude that the residents are leading healthy lifestyles.

Finally, the author also assumes without any warrant that the schoolchildren will be the future customers for Nature’s Way. The author fails to account for the possibility that the health-related program cannot be carried out successfully: The fees might be extortionately high, which prevent some students from low-income families participating in it. Moreover, it is also possible that the competitors of Nature’s Way can provide products with higher quality at affordable prices in the future, making such brands more attractive to schoolchildren.

In conclusion, as it stands the argument is wholly unjustified. To bolster it the author must demonstrate the relationship between store profits and residents’ lifestyles more explicitly. The author also needs to do deeper investigation on factors that can accurately reflect the local’s lifestyles, such as consumption of sugar per capita or obesity rates. Furthermore, the author must provide evidence about schoolchildren’s attitudes toward the fitness-for-life program and the detailed information of products sold by Nature’s Way’s competitors.