Remember the Zeeco litigation, earlier in this series, where Zeeco alleged that defendant Rhumore Corp. had caused Zeeco's sales to decline by spreading defamatory rumors about the plaintiff's products? As the case developed, there arose an important issue that turned on the relative efficacy of rumors in influencing different parts of Zeeco's product market. Marketing data show that Zeeco's customers can be divided into eight different categories, not all of which are equally susceptible to negative product information of the type allegedly disseminated by Rhumore. Rhumore would like to establish the less susceptible customers constituted the dominant part of Zeeco's customer base. Zeeco, of course, would like to create the opposite impression.

Pie graphs are a very familiar form of diagram, often used to help compare relative magnitudes. The "slices" in the pie chart below represent the relative shares of each of eight different customer classes, lettered A through H, as sources of Zeeco's sales.

Zeeco Sales by Customer Category

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