Q5 - An online auction site conducted

[smiller]

Question Type:
Explain a Result

Stimulus Breakdown:
Auction listings for certain cars included a list of defects in addition to a brief description of the car's condition. Those cars were more likely to sell than cars which did not have defects listed. The cars which had defects listed also sold for a higher price.

Answer Anticipation:
It seems a bit strange that cars would be more likely to sell, and would fetch higher prices, when buyers knew about potential defects. Did listing the defects make sellers appear more honest? Did buyers think that sellers who didn't list defects were trying to hide something? We don't know anything about the actual condition of the cars. Maybe they were all in "fair" or "poor" condition, and a list of defects helped buyers know exactly what they were getting into. Defects aren't necessarily desirable, so we're looking for a correct answer to explain why knowing about the defects would be desirable.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) If people are skeptical of the descriptions then the list of defects might not influence their buying decisions, but we still don't know why they would be more likely to buy cars when the descriptions listed defects, or why people would pay more for those cars.

(B) This does the opposite of what we want. It would seem to make people more likely to buy cars without any listed defects.

(C) Like choice (A), this doesn't explain the better sales results seen when defects were listed. We also don't know if the defects were "buried" in the detailed descriptions. In fact, we were told that each listing included a "brief" description of each car's condition. This might make it harder to "bury" the list of defects. This answer seems irrelevant.

(D) As we expected, this explains why knowing about defects helped buyers view the cars more favorably. Listing defects made the descriptions appear more accurate and complete. The buyers assumed that they would not be surprised by some unmentioned major defect.

(E) Like choices (A) and (C), this doesn't explain the difference in sales between cars that had defects listed and those that didn't. If anything, it would seem to mean that buyers pay less attention to cars with more detailed auction listings. This doesn't help explain why buyers are more likely to buy those cars or pay more for them.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Answers that do the opposite of what we want are surprisingly common in Explain a Result questions. Be sure to clearly understand the circumstance that the correct answer should help to explain.

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