Q25 - A company that produces men's

[cdjmarmon]

I chose correct answer (D) but Im a little curious why (C) isnt right. (C) could explain why sales dropped once they started advertising in a magazine with a predominantly male readership.

[timmydoeslsat]

I chose correct answer (D) but Im a little curious why (C) isnt right. (C) could explain why sales dropped once they started advertising in a magazine with a predominantly male readership.

But choice C would be true of both situations, the general circulation magazine and then predominantly male magazines.

How would the fact that most men do not wear cologne on a regular basis explain why sales dropped upon the switch from the general circulating magazine to the male readership magazines?

It does nothing for us.

[mjacob0511]

Paradox: When a certain company decided to advertise its men's cologne in only sports magazines with primarily male readership, they sold less bottles than they did during the years in which they advertised in general circulation magazines.

(A) This does not explain the discrepancy because they NEVER advertised on TV. It doesn't explain the sales decrease when switching within magazine advertisements.
(B) But why did their sales decrease? Also this doesn't tell us anything about the sports magazines.
(C) This doesn't explain anything. So 51% of people don't regularly wear cologne, but it doesn't explain the CHANGE in sales when the ads were moved. The same men who wear it and buy it should be purchasing the same amounts.
(D) Perfect. It's men's cologne but wives and gf's etc. are buying it for the men. So if the ads are placed in only magazines that women aren't reading, it would explain a decrease in sales compared to when it was advertised in magazines that the women would have seen.
(E) This is just irrelevant, it does not explain the sales decrease that came along with the change, the athletes could be advertised in both.

[daijob]

So this question seems make some small assumption?
Such as...those women who buy cologne as gifts read those general circulation magazine, and they do not read the sports magazine.
And making those assumption is allowed??
Sometimes I wonder how much assumption we can make on answer choices...

[maryadkins]

Well "general-circulation" means not just one group of people, i.e. all male like the sports magazines. So it's not very much of an inference to figure that includes non-males as well, i.e. women.

[WesleyC316]

I don't think answer choice D is phrased in a convincing way. I mean, women often buy cologne on a regular basis, then so what? What does the "often" even mean? What if women account for only 1% of the whole customer base of this company? Then wouldn't the loss of women customers become insignificant, even if women don't often buy cologne now?

That's why RRE is actually the type of questions which I hate the most. Sometimes you have to make tiny assumptions just as the test makers do. In this case, for answer choice D to be correct, there has to be an assumption that "Women are somewhat influential in terms of the sales of cologne".

It would be much more compelling to me if D is phrased like "The majority of the customers buying cologne are women", then I would certainly choose it.

Just a thought. Correct me if I'm wrong

[JigyasuP507]

Convincing way? That’s where LSAT tricks us most of the time. We go to the AC with wrong mindset. Rather than looking for perfect AC, we should look the answer that is the best available answer.
Facts given:-
1. A company(produces men’s clogne) had been advertising the product in XYZ magazines for several years.
2. Then they started advertising that product in sports magazines with predominantly male readership.
Discrepancy- Despite the fact that a company advertised the product in magazine with predominantly male readership, they sold fewer bottles of that product than any of those previous years,
Assumption made by a company was that most of the buyers of that product were male. That’s why in the hope of increasing their sales they advertised the product in magazine with predominantly male readership. This assumption is countered by AC D.
It’s possible that there could be flaws in right AC, but we are looking for the AC which most helps us to explain the discrepancy than the other ACs.
A-> Irrelevant.
B-> Irrelevant.
C-> For this AC, we have to assume that if men do not wear them, they do not buy them. Not necessarily. They can still buy them on regular basis.
D-> if women often buy the product to gift male friends or relatives then company’s stratergy doesn’t even matter. It’s true it may influence male readers to buy the product, but it atleat it gives reason to explain discrepancy as rather than influencing female buyers who often buy the product, company is focusing on male buyers.
Again, our task is to find best AC which is D.
E-> Irrelavent.
Hope that’d help!!