#22 - Advertising tends to have a greater influence on

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi jk,

You want to think broadly about what the right answer should do, not get tied in to particular situations which may or may not occur. So while it's true that if a bacterial strain lessened all yogurt sales (but not milk sales) that would explain our paradox, it's not required to be a bacterial strain. We are just looking for anything to differentiate the situation with yogurt at this store vs. how we see yogurt sales/milk sales typically respond to advertisements. The key is that we are looking for a difference, an explanatory reason that sales are not behaving as expected.

That's what answer choice (D) does for us. It says that yogurt sales are sharply decreasing across the country. That would explain why we are seeing lower than expected sales of yogurt in this store. We don't need a specific reason sales are decreasing. The fact that they are decreasing is enough to resolve this paradox.

Hope that helps

[smtq123]

Hi,
The argument mention SINCE the campaign began sales of Milk increased more than sales of Yougurt. Whereas option D mentions something that happened RECENTLY which creates the doubt whether they can be linked to each other.
B on the other hand says that INTENSION + CAMPAIGN wins!
Kindly clarify!
Thanks

[Adam Tyson]

Our job in this question is to explain what appears to be an odd situation, smtq123. If advertising tends to have more of an impact on yogurt sales than on milk sales, why have milk sales been the ones to see an increase after the recent ad campaign began? That runs counter to expectations. We need an answer that tells us what has caused this strange result.

Answer D does that by introducing an outside cause in the form of a general national trend. Maybe yogurt is just generally becoming less popular, or maybe there has been a health scare related to yogurt. Maybe Instagram influencers have been saying bad things about yogurt lately. Whatever the reason, if yogurt sales are down overall, that could explain why the ad campaign by this chain of stores is having less of an impact on yogurt sales than on milk sales - something else, outside that campaign, is having a negative impact on those sales, countering the effect of the ad campaign.

Answer B just tells us that people who are going to the store with the intention of getting milk generally aren't also planning to get yogurt. So what? That statement is apparently true whether there is an ad campaign going or not. It does nothing to explain why the milk sales went up more than the yogurt sales went up after the campaign began. The paradox remains: the ad campaign should have boosted yogurt sales more than milk sales, but the opposite occurred. Why? We need an answer that tells us what caused that opposite result, and B doesn't explain it. It has nothing to do with an increase in sales of either product, and tells us nothing about the ad campaign or any outside causes.

[queenbee]

Hi
The stimulus didn't say that the sales of yogurts decreased, they just said that the sales did not increase as much as milk did. To me that suggested that the yogurt sales remained the same or slightly higher than before, and the milk sales increased significantly. I didn't interpret this as though the sales of milk was being compared to the sales of yogurt. I read it as individual trends. With this in mind, i selected (E), which seemed to suggest that the price of store brand of milk was cheaper than other brands of milk (with the advertising), and that is why the sales of store brand milk increased more.
Would you please help me understand why this logic is incorrect?
Thanks

[Paul Popa]

Hey Queen,

That's an excellent question, and it matches a prephrase I made when I first read the stimulus. The main problem with E is that we're not told that LargeCo's store-brand milk was any cheaper than other brands. If it was, that could very well explain the paradox in the stimulus. But the store-brand milk might be the same price, or even more expensive, than other brands. Because we don't know the cost of the milk, we can't claim that it was responsible for the increase in sales. Hope this helps!