Manager: Our company's mail-order

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct67% picked this

   Mail-order sales have been decreasing for companies that do not offer

   Why this is right

   This is a classic "No Cause, No Effect" causal strengthener. For companies that do not have this new shipping policy, there is not an increase in mail-order sales (there's a decrease). This also goes against the potential alternate explanation that mail-order sales are going up for some industry-wide reason (maybe there's a pandemic and everyone needs to order stuff via the mail now). Since sales are going down for other companies, it rules out the idea that sales are up for this company because of something like "the Christmas rush".

   Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   67%
2. B

   Weakens5% picked this

   The company did not widely advertise its change

   In order to think that the new shipping policy is causing the uptick in sales, we would have to think that customers were aware that shipping policies had changed. If there wasn't much advertising about the policy change, this makes it less plausible that this new policy is driving better sales.

   5%
3. C

   No Impact19% picked this

   The company's profits from mail-order sales have increased since the change

   We already new revenue (sales) had gone up. Did we already know profits had gone up? As long as new revenue was higher than new expenses, profit would be going up. But our concern is why profit/revenue is going up. This answer fills out our impression of the company's recent performance, but it isn't helping us at all to assess the cause of the recent performance.

   19%
4. D

   Opposite4% picked this

   The company's change in policy occurred well after its competitors started offering

   For "free shipping on all items" to be a causal difference-maker, you'd want to think that your company was one of the only ones to offer it. If everybody offers free shipping, then there's nothing "special" about free shipping that would be driving sales. If this company was one of the first to offer free shipping, then that would be more likely to generate new business than if this company were one of the last to switchover to free shipping.

   4%
5. E

   Weaker Than Correct Answer5% picked this

   Most companies offer free shipping only on mail-order purchases

   This does strengthen somewhat, because it make this company seem like they're in the minority by offering free shipping on under $50 purchases. It isn't a super impactful idea, because if there are 20 companies, it's saying at most 9 of them offer free shipping on under $50 purchases. But it's not nothing. However, (A) not only tells us what this tells us -- that some companies don't offer free shipping on everything -- it also tells us that those companies are performing worse. This answer gives us, "a lot of companies don't offer free shipping". (A) gives us, "a lot of companies don't offer free shipping, and they're not doing as well".

   5%