Logical Reasoning

PT136 · S4 · Q12 Manager: Our company's mail-order

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Manager: Our company’s mail-order sales have recently increased 25 percent.

Conclusion

Our change in policy to offer free shipping on all times (not just those over $50) caused the recent increase in mail-order sales.

Evidence

The increase started right around the time we changed our shipping policy.

Evaluate

This is a Causal Argument, in which the author presents a Curious Fact (why did mail-order sales go up 25% recently) and posits a Causal Explanation (changing our shipping policy led to the more sales).

We evaluate all causal arguments by thinking: - how else would we explain the Curious Fact? - how plausible is the Author's Story?

What are other ways to explain why sales went up? Better website design? New products? Christmas season?

How would we assess the plausibility of the Author's Story? Did customers not like the old shipping policy? Are they aware of the new policy? Were most of the orders before under $50 (thus, they would be affected by the shipping change)?

Goal

- Rule Out some other way to explain why the sales went up or - Boost the plausibility of the story that the new shipping policy is the causal difference-maker

12.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the manager's argument?

  1. Correct

    Mail-order sales have been decreasing

    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.

    68% picked this

  2. The company did not widely

    Weakens

    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% picked this

  3. The company's profits from mail-order

    No Impact

    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% picked this

  4. The company's change in policy

    Opposite

    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% picked this

  5. Most companies offer free shipping

    Weaker Than Correct Answer

    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% picked this

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