CR: The recent upheaveal

[guest22]

16. The recent upheaval in the office-equipment retail business, in which many small firms have gone out of business, has been attributed to the advent of office equipment "superstores" whose high sales volume keeps their prices low. This analysis is flawed, however, since even today the superstores control a very small share of the retail market.
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument that the analysis is flawed?
(A) Most of the larger customers for office equipment purchase under contract directly from manufacturers and thus do not participate in the retail market.
(B) The superstores’ heavy advertising of their low prices has forced prices down throughout the retail market for office supplies.
(C) Some of the superstores that only recently opened have themselves gone out of business.
(D) Most of the office equipment superstores are owned by large retailing chains that also own stores selling other types of goods.
(E) The growing importance of computers in most offices has changed the kind of office equipment retailers must stock.


The answer is B, but why can't A work? I assumed that to weaken the conclusion, the answer choice would have to knock away an assumption..which A does by stating that most of the customers don't participate in the open market...

[manic]

This question is relatively trickier than the usual weaken question because its asking the test taker to weaken an opinion made about the main subject in the stem.

A is incorrect because it implies that the superstores did not impact the retail market and hence A supports the statement that the analysis is flawed.

B is correct because it weakens the statement "analysis is flawed" by showing that the superstores impacted the retail market via heavy advertising.

[RonPurewal]

tough problem.

remember that you must stay within the scope of the argument. you should develop a keen sense for what is, and what isn't, relevant to the issue(s) at hand.
in this problem, the argument is concerned solely with the retail market; non-retail business, such as the direct contracting mentioned in choice (a), is irrelevant to the discussion.

here's the basic skeleton of the argument:
* someone has attributed small firms' struggling in the equipment retail business to the entry of superstores into that retail market.
* this is flawed because the superstores control a low % of the market.

your goal here is to weaken the argument, which, as always, is done by undermining assumptions.
it's actually fairly straightforward to pick up on the key assumption in the argument here, because a connection is made, without any explicit justification, between (a) the superstores' low market share in the retail business and (b) their purported inability to affect the bottom line of the other firms in the business.
therefore, the argument (the original argument, which the narrator says is flawed) makes the following assumption: stores with a small market share can't possibly affect the other firms in the market.

therefore, we need to find an answer choice that gives a way in which stores can affect the other firms in the market even if those stores have a small market share.

choice (b) does this: the stores' heavy advertising is independent of their small market share, so this choice gives a way in which the superstores, despite a small market share, can have a significant impact on the rest of the market.

to reiterate, choice (a) is irrelevant, because the argument is concerned solely with the retail market, and so any consideration of the non-retail market is outside the scope of the argument.

[Guest]

But I have choosen D can you please find the flaw with D

[RonPurewal]

But I have choosen D can you please find the flaw with D

(d) is completely irrelevant.

the scope of the passage is limited to the retail market for office supplies, particularly the impact of superstores upon that market.

the ownership of the superstores isn't relevant to this line of reasoning; there is nothing whatsoever in the passage that has any relation to the ownership of the stores.
furthermore, it makes no difference what other kinds of stores are owned by the same owners, as those other stores do business outside the office supply retail market (and are therefore outside the scope of the argument).

[gmataspirant9]

Just thinking why the option C is wrong.
Because several super stores has gone out of business, there market share of sales is not "currently" reflecting, but still somehow they might have affected the overall retail business in the recent past.

can anyone please clarify?

[srjayanthi]

Here is why I think option C is wrong.

The goal is to show that something that the superstores did had an impact (in this case negative) on the small business sales.

SOME superstores themselves going down does not create that link.

SJ

[RonPurewal]

Here is why I think option C is wrong.

The goal is to show that something that the superstores did had an impact (in this case negative) on the small business sales.

SOME superstores themselves going down does not create that link.

SJ

option (c) is worse than that.

the argument purports to show that the advent of superstores (i.e., not small stores) is putting small stores out of business, to the ultimate benefit of the superstores.
if some of the superstores themselves are also going out of business, then that theory is weakened considerably; those are the businesses that are supposed to be coming out ahead in the new arrangement.

[kd17]

Hi Ron,

Sorry to open this thread up again, but when I looked at this problem initially, I thought that although the superstores had a small share of the overall retail market (this includes other products besides office equip), they had a large share of the office equipment retail market which would in turn affect the smaller firms. Am I making the wrong assumption? Is the retail market in the last sentence referring to the office equip retail market? This is what got me really confused because I couldn't find an answer that supported this assumption and it seemed to be a glaring assumption.

In addition, in cases where I can't find an answer that addresses the assumption I've identified, I become stuck. Any tips on how to handle these sort of situations? I find that I run out of time if I don't immediately identify the correct assumption.

Thanks in advance!

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

Sorry to open this thread up again, but when I looked at this problem initially, I thought that although the superstores had a small share of the overall retail market (this includes other products besides office equip), they had a large share of the office equipment retail market which would in turn affect the smaller firms. Am I making the wrong assumption? Is the retail market in the last sentence referring to the office equip retail market? This is what got me really confused because I couldn't find an answer that supported this assumption and it seemed to be a glaring assumption.

Nah. Because this problem doesn't discuss any retail product other than office equipment, it's understood that "the retail market" is the overall market for office equipment.

Even if you don't figure that out right away, you can just use common sense. If "the retail market" meant the entire market for all retail goods, then ANY company, selling ANYTHING, would have a small share of that market.
You should assume that the statements in the passage are not meaningless tautologies, so that interpretation is out.

[RonPurewal]

In addition, in cases where I can't find an answer that addresses the assumption I've identified, I become stuck. Any tips on how to handle these sort of situations? I find that I run out of time if I don't immediately identify the correct assumption.

Thanks in advance!

Oh. Well, by thinking explicitly about assumptions, you've just made these problems 1,000,000,853,945,109 times harder.

* Thinking about how to support or defeat someone's argument is a very normal human thought process. I.e., you probably don't go through a single day of your life without some sort of "strengthen" or "weaken" type thinking.

* Thinking explicitly about assumptions, on the other hand, is much less normal. (It's not totally alien, but it's not something that people do every day -- because assumptions are, by definition, tacit. They aren't stated.)

When you do strengthening/weakening, just ...
... identify the issue/claim at hand
... think DIRECTLY about whether the statements support or damage the claim.

There's no need to think explicitly about assumptions. My gosh that would make things hard.

E.g.,
My friend is eating more food than ever before. Therefore, she will gain weight.
--> Quick! Think of three ways you could WEAKEN this argument. I.e., three ways it might be WRONG.
Hmm...
... She might be exercising more.
... She might be eating more food that's less dense in calories (vegetables, etc.)
... She might be taking some medicine that speeds metabolism.
Etc.

Note how easy it is to come up with these weakeners, directly, as weakeners. It's the most normal thought process ever: "Why might this be wrong?"
On the other hand, it's WAY more difficult to do this if you're thinking about "assumptions" first. In fact, the third weakener above (about medicine) is essentially impossible to formulate if you're thinking about assumptions first.

[RonPurewal]

By the way, this idea is also the reason why the "negation method" is such a powerful way of solving problems about assumptions: It takes a weird thought process (identifying assumptions explicitly), and converts it into a much more normal thought process (telling whether something defeats an argument).

[kd17]

That definitely makes sense. Thanks for the awesome explanation!

[RonPurewal]

You're welcome.

Remember that 99.9% of CR is just the same kind of thinking that you use on planet earth.