[GRE] Argument #7

7. The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books.

We recommend that Monarch Books open a cafe in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because it is known for its wide selections of books on all subjects. Clearly, opening the cafe would attract more customers. Space could be made for the cafe by discontinuing the children’s books section, which will probably became less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten. Opening a cafe will allow Monarch to attract more customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened its own cafe.

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answer to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

The board of directors recommend opening a cafe in Monarch books to attract more customers and compete with the rival store. Although opening a cafe in a book store can be beneficiary, the reasons mentioned in the passage have some holes and weak links to make valid evaluations. 

Firstly, due to lack of specific description, we do not know how making the cafe inside of Monarch book store would affect to the size of the children’s books section and possibly rearrangement of the other sections near there. Although the authors simply insist that space could be made by discontinuing the children’s books section, the word “discontinuing” can be interpreted in various ways. For example, it may mean transforming the hallway of the children's books section to the cafe area, or it may mean replacing the all showcases and shelves in the section with the space for the cafe. The former case may not be a big problem except a little inconvenience for the people passing through. If it is the latter case, however, the sales of children's books can be seriously impacted. In other words, the children's books sales will be reduced. Thus the authors need to clarify and analyze how the interior of the book store will be changed in more detail.

In addition, the authors predict that market demands for children's books will decrease. The reason for this is the declining portion of under age-ten-children. However, this does not necessarily indicate that the absolute population of under age ten is also declining because when the number of whole population is rising much more, the number of children can actually be increasing. And even if the decline of the absolute number of children is true, it is still not certain the decline of children population can directly cause the decline of the book market for children. The demands for children's books can become bigger while the number of  children is getting smaller. For example, over the past few years, birth rate in South Korea is decreasing since married couples do not want to spend their lives too much only for nurturing children. So they usually have only one child and be called, "DIOK(Double Income One Kid)". These couples instead give more focused attention and care for their only child. Therefore, even though the population of children is decreasing, the average spending per family on products for children is rather increasing. Thus, the supporting evidence in the passage is not persuasive enough. If the authors showed the history of children's books sales, their argument would have been more persuasive.  

Furthermore, Monarch books should not open a cafe merely because Regal books opened cafe and to follow them. It is not definite how many customers would come more for the cafe and how advantageous for the store over its competitor. Even if Regal books could attract more customers and sell more books after opening the cafe, the increase of customers and sales could be from another factor that occurred simultaneously. For instance, Regal books could have offered special promotion during the cafe-opening period or expanded the size of store. Besides, the positive effect of opening a cafe at Regal books may not be replicated similarly at Monarch books. The result from only one case does not guarantee anything. In statistical inference, in order to be sure on the existence of an effect of something, at least data of 30 samples from each conditions respectively are required. If, to find out the effect of opening a cafe, the comparison between 30 book stores which have a cafe and 30 book stores which do not have a cafe was provided, the rationale of opening a cafe could be more concrete.  

To sum up, the authors should have described the details of the impact of building a cafe inside of Monarch book, the links between the children population decline and the sales of books, and more extensive data from large samples.