LR Question 22 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Advertising tends to have a greater influence on…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
PARADOX: Advertising affects yogurt preferences more than it affects milk preferences.
Yet when LargeCo advertised its store-brands, sales of store-brand milk increased faster than store-brand yogurt.
ANALYSIS: We would ordinarily expect an ad campaign to increase yogurt sales more than it increases milk sales. But after this ad campaign, milk sales increased more. There are at least two ways to explain this:
- Some unique factor in the ad campaign made it relatively more effective for milk.
- Some outside factor increased milk sales or decreased yogurt sales. (Ads are not the only reason products sell)
To properly explain the paradox, you need an answer that shows a difference between milk and yogurt. Only D and E do this. On paradox questions, most answers can be eliminated for similar reasons.
___________
- This doesn’t help, because it doesn’t tell us anything about milk. We need an answer that explains a difference between milk and yogurt.
- Who cares? The question is asking about the changes in yogurt and milk sales. We only care about why people buy each product. It doesn’t matter if people buy yogurt and milk together or separately.
- This doesn’t let us distinguish between milk and yogurt. Both are dairy products.
- CORRECT. This is a good explanation. It shows that the ad campaign wasn’t the only factor in yogurt sales. So it’s possible that the ad campaign helped yogurt more than it helped milk, but the nationwide drop in yogurt sales wiped out much of the benefits of the ad campaign.
- This makes the situation more confusing. The ad campaign shouldn’t have affected milk sales if people mainly buy milk based on price. We’re not told that milk prices changed.
More Resources for Paradox Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Paradox questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers paradox questions.
Graeme, I have mulled this over in my head several times, and I still cannot come to the conclusion of why D is the right answer for this question. Initially I thought the information provided by D was irrelevant considering we’re concerned with LargeCo, not the nation itself. Presumably I was thinking that even though there was a sharp decrease in nationwide yogurt sales, why couldn’t LargeCo still have an increase on its store brand yogurt, greater than that of milk? Maybe, after the sharp decline in sales, yogurt still has a much more responsive consumer segment than milk e.g. Water sales have sharply declined since summer is over but maybe it’s growth is still larger than soda’s because soda remains unaffected by advertisement, seasonality, other various economic factors due to loyal brand users…I suppose I’m just unclear how milk is explained by this phenomenon. I feel like as test takers we were looking for something that said, ‘shoppers did not like the taste of the store brand yogurt while milk taste was unaffected’ or ‘LargeCo yogurt price was unchanged while the price of store brand milk was significantly lower than competitors’ …I don’t know something like that.
If you could elaborate further that would be helpful. Also thank you for posting these.
We’re looking for the answer that could potentially explain this scenario. It’s important to remember that we’re not looking for something airtight–as we are in, say, sufficient assumption questions. LargeCo is a company within the nation that the stimulus is describing, so it’s feasible that a nation-wide decline in the sales of yogurt recently would explain why there was a greater increase in sales of milk. Yes, it’s also quite possible that LargeCo yogurt has a consumer base that’s so responsive to advertising that it more than compensates for the nationwide decline, but it’s also possible that it’s not responsive at all. So, all we can do is look at what we’re given in the stimulus and an answer choice, and see if that answer choice is the best of the five at possibly contributing to an explanation of the phenomenon we are given.