Marketing consultant: Last year

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong22% picked this

   it takes for granted that LRG's sales would not have been lower still in the absence of

   Was the author assuming, "sales would not have been even lower without the campaign"? Maybe? This is very tempting. If we negated that assumption, we'd get "sales would have been even lower without the campaign". Does that hurt the argument? Almost. The problem is the author could say, "Of course sales would have been lower with NO ad campaign. I'm not saying the ad campaign did nothing. I'm saying it didn't do as much good as my ad campaign would have." We could fix this answer by saying, "it takes for granted that LRG's sales would have been higher had the ad campaign taken the consultant's advice". The author is assuming a mental comparison in which his version of the ad campaign outperforms the actual version that ended up happening. But we can't say the author is assuming that the actual ad campaign was functionally worthless, that it essentially had no impact and the company's sales would have been just as low with no campaign at all. If the author's conclusion had been, "Thus, the ad campaign did nothing", then this answer would be correct. But because it's just, "the ad campaign was ill conceived" then it means that the author is only saying "the ad campaign could have done better than it did, were it better designed".

   22%
2. B

   Correct67% picked this

   it fails to consider that economic factors unrelated to the advertising campaign may have caused

   Why this is right

   Would it weaken the argument to say, "Hey, author, economic factors unrelated to the ad campaign caused LRG's low sales figures"? Yes, definitely. The author's entire evidence for claiming that the ad campaign was poorly conceived are these low sales figures. If we say, "those low sales figures are unrelated", then the author has zero evidence for her conclusion. Another way to describe what this answer is doing is proposing an Alternate Explanation for the Curious Fact. The author assumed that a bad campaign caused sales to be down, but it's possible the economy is just in a recession and that's why sales are down.

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

   67%
3. C

   Too Strong2% picked this

   it takes for granted that in LRG's industry, new products should

   The author isn't making any sweeping assumptions that within LRG's industry, any new product is expected to outsell an established product. The fact that the author emphasized the especially poor performance of new products doesn't mean he was expecting new to be better than established. It just means he was expecting new products to sell better than new products sold.

   2%
4. D

   Opposite4% picked this

   it takes for granted that the higher sales of established products are due

   The established products have higher sales, relative to newer products. But they still have lower sales, relative to their own past performance. So it doesn't make any sense to say the author is thinking that this "poorly conceived" ad campaign was effective at advertising established products, even though following the ad campaign sales of established products are down.

   4%
5. E

   Wrong Flaw6% picked this

   it confuses a condition necessary for increasing product sales with a condition that will

   Language like "necessary / ensure" describes the famous Necessary vs. Sufficient flaw, which means that the author presented a conditional relationship in the evidence and then applied that rule in an illegal backwards or opposite fashion. When we see this answer choice, our first question should be, "Was there conditional logic in the premises?" When the answer is "Nope", as it is here, then we can quickly eliminate this and move on.

   6%