Logical Reasoning

PT144 · S2 · Q11 A hardware store generally

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A hardware store generally sells roughly equal numbers of Maxlast brand hammers and Styron brand hammers.

Given That ...

This store usually sells about an equal number of Maxlast and Styron hammers, and given that last all the Maxlast were put on sale and in a display case just inside the store entrance.

How Can it Be That ...

The Styron hammers (at their usual price and location) sold slightly better.

Evaluate / Goal

We're essentially wondering, Why was it bad for sales of Maxlast, to put it on sale and put it near the front? or Why was it good for sales of Styron, to remain in their usual location (with all the Maxlast hammers moved elsewhere)?

Maybe the sale price seemed to good to be true so people didn't trust buying a Maxlast (they paid more for Styron thinking the higher price indicated better quality).

Maybe the display case was ugly, or people were turned off that they couldn't touch the Maxlast's and see how they felt in their hands.

11.

Which one of the following, if true, does most to explain the surprising result?

  1. Correct

    For the first several seconds

    Why this is right

    This points out something bad about being moved to "just inside the store entrance". If we customers have blinders on when we first enter a store, then we're not really noticing any of the products advertised up front in display cases. We're checking out the attractiveness of the cashier, or we're looking ahead at the signs hanging in the aisles to determine which aisle we want to go to. If someone walked into this store with "tunnel vision" and walked straight to the hammer aisle, then they would end up buying a Styron, because those hammers were still in the hammer aisle. Their competitor (the Maxlast) had all been moved to the front, so now we're standing in the hammer aisle and we just pick up a Styron.

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

    76% picked this

  2. Most of the hardware store's

    Too Weak

    This answer helps to explain why a sale price might not do that much good for Maxlast, but one would still think that prominently displaying the Maxlast at the front of the store in a display case would still have helped sales. And if people don't care about low prices (which we'll pretend means "sale prices"), then we'd still expect Maxlast and Styron to perform essentially the same as before, whereas the paradox involves Maxlast actually selling slightly worse than before. This answer doesn't have any way to explain why Maxlast would be selling somewhat worse than before.

    20% picked this

  3. Customers who bought the Maxlast

    Deepens Paradox

    This makes it sound like the sale price was an attractive causal difference-maker in some people's purchases, so now we're even more confused why Maxlast on sale ended up doing worse than Styron at regular price.

    1% picked this

  4. The hardware store circulated flyers

    Deepens Paradox

    One possible way to explain why the sale price didn't seem to help Maxlast sales would be to say, "No one realized it was even on sale!" But this answer removes that possible explanation. The sale was well hyped, so we're even more confused why it didn't work and even seemed to slightly backfire.

    0% picked this

  5. In general, a single item

    No Impact

    We were never talking about whether someone would or wouldn't be motivated to take a trip to the hardware store. We were just looking at the typical flow of customers, typical buying behavior. If the typical flow + buying behavior had Maxlast and Styron performing about equally, then how did giving Maxlast a lower price and more prominent display end up being slightly worse?

    3% picked this

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