Internet Advertising

The following was used as part of an internet advertising company's appeal to businesses: Furniture Depot employed our internet advertising company to help. Since then its sales increased by 10% over last year's totals. Furniture Depot's success demonstrates how using our internet services can increase your profitability.

Describe how well reasoned you find this argument...

The argument asserts that Furniture Depot was able to increase its sales by 10% by using the advertisement company's services. Although the argument looks convincing on the first look, it has some loopholes.

The first flaw is the assumption that Furniture Depot did not use any other medium to advertise except internet. A business can advertise in magazines, newspapers, billboards, radio, pamphlets and television channels besides internet. It is also possible that it was just the concerned company's excellent services which led to a positive word-of-mouth and corresponding increase in sales. It is not clear if the concerned company employed only internet or a combination of a wide array of mediums to achieve the increase in sales.

Hence, the argument can be made substantially stronger if it mentions that Furniture Depot advertised on internet only. Alternatively, if a combination of mediums was used, the argument must state the contribution of internet advertising to the revenue instead of crediting it with the entire increase.

Another flaw is that even if we assume that internet advertisement was solely responsible for the 10% growth, it is possible that the advertising company is serving advertisements only on furniture related websites . This may have helped the Furniture Depot to increase its sales, and may even prove helpful to other furniture-based companies. Nevertheless, other businesses may not benefit much from such an arrangement. In order to make the argument more comprehensive, it would be prudent for it to mention if the advertisements are context specific or focus only on a particular industry.

Concluding, the presented argument is plausible but has some flaws. In fact, it can be made stronger if it clearly states that the sales growth was a result of internet advertisement only and that it has the capability to target other business sectors besides furniture.