#22 - Advertising tends to have a greater influence on

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (D)

This stimulus contains a surprising combination of facts. Although it generally is the case that
advertising has a greater impact on consumer preferences for brands of yogurt than on consumer
preferences for brands of milk, there is some indication that this general tendency has not held true
recently for the LargeCo supermarket chain. This chain has been advertising its store-brand products,
including both its milk and yogurt. However, since this advertising campaign has begun, sales of its
store-brand milk have increased more than sales of its store-brand yogurt.

The question stem identifies this as a Resolve the Paradox question. Our task is to identify the
surprising situation and then pick the answer choice containing what caused that surprising situation
to occur. Here, the surprising situation is that it seems as if, despite the typical situation, LargeCo’s
dairy-product advertising has had a greater influence on customer preferences than has the yogurtproduct
advertising. So the effect of the advertising in this case is different than expected for either
the dairy products or the yogurt products or both. Our prephrase is that the correct answer will tell us
what has caused the advertising effect to be different in this case.

Answer choice (A): This answer choice does not explain the difference between the impact on
consumer demand for milk and consumer demand for yogurt. The stimulus told us that there has
been an increase in the demand for yogurt. The question is why the increase in that demand did not
outstrip the increase in consumer demand for the store-brand milk.

Answer choice (B): Here, the answer choice tells us about shoppers’ intentions when they go to the
store, but does not explain why the advertising has had a different effect than normally anticipated.

Answer choice (C): In this case, the answer choice does nothing to explain the lesser impact of
advertising on yogurt sales. The comparison in this answer choice, between store-brand dairy
products and other dairy products is irrelevant to the paradox.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice because it explains why it appears that the
advertising has had less than the expected effect on store-brand yogurt sales. Since yogurt sales,
generally, have been down throughout the entire nation, the store’s advertising campaign may still
have had a greater impact on consumer preferences for yogurt than for milk. It simply may be the
case that the yogurt advertising started at such a disadvantage due to the national trend that the sales
of milk still increased more than the sales of yogurt.

Answer choice (E): If anything, this answer choice makes the situation in the stimulus more
confusing, since there appears to be a built-in bias for store brands of yogurt. However, without
additional context, it’s unclear how to judge this information. For example, it could be the case that
all of the store’s customers were already buying the store-brand yogurt, such that there was not much
room for the sales of the store-brand yogurt to increase, resulting in sales of the store-brand milk
increasing more than the sales of store-brand yogurt.

[karen_k]

Hi,

I picked B as my answer and am having trouble understanding why D is a better answer. Thank you!

[David Boyle]

Hi,

I picked B as my answer and am having trouble understanding why D is a better answer. Thank you!

Hello karen_k,

Answer B, "The typical shopper going to LargeCo for the purpose of buying milk does not go with the intention of also buying yogurt", may just not have much to do with advertising milk or yogurt either. (It may help a tiny bit in explaining the discrepancy, in that it shows that milk fans aren't too prone to buy yogurt. Still, it doesn't help a great deal.)
However, answer D shows a bigger issue which sort of outweighs the effectiveness of yogurt ads vs. milk ads. That is, if there's a collapse of yogurt sales anyway, even the comparatively high effectiveness of yogurt ads may not be able to reverse the slide and make yogurt sales rise faster than milk sales.

Hope this helps,
David

[karen_k]

Thank you David!

[lanereuden]

I think the bigger problem with B actually is that persona/ purpose of buying milk does not have purpose of buying yogurtt—this claim does not discuss the people that go for the purpose of buying yogurt, which is the other group that needs discussing before this answer choice could suffice.

Likewise, To elabaorate on why E is wrong, I’d say that this requires outside information and making assumptions thereabouts.

So that’s why e is wrong

[Zach Foreman]

Lane,
For this Resolve the Paradox, I would prephrase something like "There must be a difference between yogurt shoppers and milk shoppers or the yogurt and milk at this particular store" such as how brand-loyal they are, the relative price of the store-brands, or something. The basic idea is that in order to explain a difference, you need to show a difference. B looks decent but actually doesn't work because it describes the "typical shopper" not the shoppers of yogurt contrasted with the shoppers of milk. E looks ok since it fits the prephrase of describing different shoppers but it doesn't do it in a meaningful way. It fails to differentiate the shoppers of each at this store, but rather discusses consumers in general.
D points to a big difference between the shoppers though it is vague. Yogurt shoppers (presumably at this chain too) have reduced their purchases of yogurt. That would easily explain why, despite an advertising campaign, sales of the generic yogurt didn't increase as much as sales of generic milk. It is because overall sales of all types of yogurt, name brand and store brand, have decreased.

[ssnasir]

Hi there,

I just wanted to check if my reasoning was okay. I originally picked B but after giving it some thought I figured that B doesn't resolve the paradox because the question is why did milk sales go up following the adds at Large Co so if you're already going with the intention to buy milk why would adds have any impact on your choices?

It'd be great if you'd let me know that's okay.

Thank you!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi ssnasir,

Agree with you about your reasoning on answer choice B, so nice job! I think there's another good reason to reject answer choice B (which, incidentally, for me was the most tempting wrong answer choice here). We don't know how many typical shoppers go to LargeCo for the purpose of buying milk, so even if those shoppers were affected by the recent advertisements, that might not have enough impact to tilt sales more in favor of the LargeCo store-brand milk. Answer choice D is a much stronger answer choice from a numerical perspective because it covers supermarkets "throughout the entire nation."

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[ssnasir]

Hi ssnasir,

Agree with you about your reasoning on answer choice B, so nice job! I think there's another good reason to reject answer choice B (which, incidentally, for me was the most tempting wrong answer choice here). We don't know how many typical shoppers go to LargeCo for the purpose of buying milk, so even if those shoppers were affected by the recent advertisements, that might not have enough impact to tilt sales more in favor of the LargeCo store-brand milk. Answer choice D is a much stronger answer choice from a numerical perspective because it covers supermarkets "throughout the entire nation."

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

Thank you so much!

[jk6321]

I don't think your explanation makes any sense whatsoever. I think it would be better to say that some other factor caused such as a bacterial outbreak caused all yogurt brands to decrease in sales to negate the effect of advertisings, but the milk advertisement didn't have any other causal factors that negated it effect.