Critical Thinking for Marketers, Volume I

CHAPTER 4

Formal Logical Fallacies in Marketing: Introduction

This chapter introduces you to six formal logical fallacies in marketing compared to the 54 informal logical fallacies discussed in Chapter 5. Since most marketers’ arguments are inductive and not deductive in nature, one does not often come across formal logical fallacies in marketing. Nonetheless they do occur, and when they do, they can be subtle and lead to some disastrous outcomes if not checked.

Formal logical fallacies can be subtle for two reasons: First, they often sound valid. The statement, “Average sales for each of our sales reps increased six weeks after we initiated the new sales training program. That was a great sales training consultant we hired,” sounds valid, but ...