PROMPT: “Mesa Foods, a manufacturer of snack foods that currently markets its products within a relatively small region of the country, has a strong growth potential. Mesa enjoyed a 20 percent increase in profits last year, and its best-selling product, Diabolique Salsa, has had increased sales over each of the past three years. Since Omni Inc. is interested in reaching 14-to-25-year olds, the age group that consumes the most snack food, we should buy Mesa Foods, and concentrate in particular on marketing Diabolique Salsa throughout the country.”
Discuss what evidence you would need to properly evaluate the argument and explain how that evidence might strengthen or weaken the argument.
The author of this argument believes that Omni Inc. should buy Mesa Food and advertise one of its products throughout the country based on several reasons. However, those reasons are full of holes, therefore, this argument if very far away from convincing this company to buy Mesa Foods.
First of all, increase in the sales of products does not reflect the growth. Indeed, if Mesa Food sells its product with no profit it is likely that the products would be cheaper for customers and they would prefer getting their snack from Mesa Food. At the end of the day, sales might increase but the store does not make any profit.
Additionally, the author assumes that Mesa Foods is growing and will continue growing just because its profits has gone up and one of its products sold more than previous years. When to assess whether a business is growing, we cannot only consider if the business profits more than last year. There are very crucial factors to be considered. Mainly we should look at how other business is doing in that region and also throughout the country. It might be the case the profits of a snack food store just next to Mesa Foods has increased by 50%. Or, all over the country the profits of such business have increased maybe because government introduced a tax cut on business owners and business owners reduced the prices. So, now snack foods are more affordable, and people prefer it to over-priced salad. Since the author does not take into account any other factors rather than the increase of the profit of Mesa Food, we cannot know whether Mesa Food has grown or fell behind of other snack foods stores.
Besides, the author claims that the Mesa Food has grown and will continue growing just because the sale of the product, Diabolique Salsa, is the most sold one in the store and its sale has increased in last years. The author does not tell us why he chose this product over the others but more importantly we should assess whether this store is growing based on this single product but not the other products. It might be the case that the sales of all the remaining products are in decline or the store next to Mesa Foods sold Diabolique Salsa four times more than Mesa Food.
In addition, the author claims that the Omni Inc. should by Mesa Food because 14-25 year olds are consuming the most snack food and the company is interested in selling to them. The author makes assumption when he says 14-25 year olds are consuming the most snack food with no evidence to support his claim. But even though his claim was true, is there any other research that shows that this population will buy from Mesa Foods. Maybe they consume snack foods only or mostly from other stores in the region like McDonalds or Burger King. The author does not even suggest that 14-25 year olds have bought their snacks from Mesa Foods so far. How can we be sure that once Omni Inc. bought the store, they will start buying their snacks from Mesa Foods.
The author also believes that the store’s best-selling product Diabolique Salsa can be spread throughout the country based on the fact that there is an increase of its sale in Mesa Food. He does not offer any explanation of whether this product would be consumed in this small region that Mesa Foods in, but he thinks that people all over country would consume it. It might be the case that this product belongs to one culture that is present in that small region only and the rest of the country does not even know it exists or would not like it if they knew its existence. Marketing such product would be suicidal without further information regarding whether it is only consumed by a small number of people in a small region or it could become popular all over the country.
The author’s argument to buy Mesa Food is not strong enough to convince Omni Inc.
