Keeping in mind the sources cited, discuss the credibility of the claim(s) made in the following passage:"The mail order company Hammacher Schlemmer & Co. says in its consumer catalogs that it sells nothing but the best. The company supports its claims by what it calls independent testing. But Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, in a book called The Mis-Fortune 500 (New York: Pocket Books, 1988), say that while a 1986 letter to potential customers claimed that a 'completely separate' 'consumer' organization tested and compared the products offered by Hammacher Schlemmer, in reality:"the testing organization is called the Hammacher Schlemmer Institute.""the institute is funded by Hammacher Schlemmer & Co.""the institute's board of directors is composed of Hammacher Schlemmer officials.""the

Question

institute is located at Hammacher Schlemmer company headquarters in Chicago."

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The company maintains that the Institute is separate from its other divisions; yet it strains credibility when the implied comparison is between the Institute and say, Consumers Union. Presumably the authors of The Mis-Fortune 500 have presented the whole story in their book, but their claim to fame is to have been the coauthors of several baseball "hall of shame" books and to have appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman." The point is that the examples culled from press reports are intended to show business at its worst-without including mitigating circumstances. We tend to swallow negative claims more easily, especially if they are embarrassing to Big Business or Big Government.