Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Hard

PT8 S4 Q17 Explanation

Certain items—those with that

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsMethod

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Stimulus

Certain items—those with that hard-to-define quality called exclusivity—have the odd property, when they become available for sale, of selling rapidly even though they are extremely expensive. In fact, trying to sell such an item fast by asking too low a price is a serious error, since it calls into question the very error in the initial asking price is in the direction of setting the price too high.

What this question is testing

Method

Conclusion

The author tells sellers of exclusive items: if you're going to miss the right price, miss high — not low.

Evidence

Why? Because pricing too low is specifically harmful: it undercuts the very exclusivity that's the item's main appeal.

Evaluate

Notice the argument structure. The author isn't saying pricing-too-high has all kinds of benefits. The author is saying pricing-too-low has a particular self-defeating problem — it kills exclusivity. So pricing-too-high wins by default: it lacks that specific counterproductive feature.

Goal

The right answer will describe this exact move — recommend strategy A because strategy B has a counterproductive feature that A doesn't share.

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The question
17.

The argument recommends a certain pricing strategy on the

Answer choices

  1. Correct66% picked this

    this strategy lacks a counterproductive feature of the

    Why this is right

    This describes the argument's move precisely. The recommended strategy (price too high) is recommended because the rejected alternative (price too low) has a counterproductive feature: it undermines exclusivity, the item's chief appeal. The author doesn't list positive features of the high-pricing strategy — it's recommended because it avoids the specific drawback of the low-pricing strategy.

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

  2. Bad Description9% picked this

    this strategy has all of the advantages of the rejected alternative, but fewer

    The argument doesn't inventory advantages and disadvantages on both sides. It identifies one specific bad feature of the rejected alternative (destroying exclusivity) and recommends the other strategy because it lacks that feature. There's no claim about overall advantage parity.

  3. Bad Description4% picked this

    experience has proven this strategy to be superior, even though the reasons for this

    The argument explicitly explains its reasoning — that low pricing destroys exclusivity. It doesn't appeal to inscrutable experience that defies analysis. The case is made through analysis, not by saying "we don't know why, but trust us."

  4. Bad Description6% picked this

    this strategy does not rely on prospective buyers’ estimates

    The argument doesn't make any claim about whether the strategy depends on buyers' value estimates. It says the right price is hard to gauge in advance, but doesn't recommend high pricing because it avoids depending on buyer estimates.

  5. Bad Description14% picked this

    the error associated with this strategy, unlike the error associated with the rejected alternative, is

    The argument doesn't suggest the high-pricing error goes unnoticed; it suggests that any error in that direction lacks the specific self-defeating feature of the low-pricing error. There's no claim about visibility of the error.

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