#20 - The layouts of supermarkets are not accidental: they

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True, Principle. The correct answer choice is (E)

This author tells us of the deliberate plans to induce shoppers to walk all the way through supermarkets, and the fact that such a layout can have alienating effects.

Answer choice (A): There is no such focus on particular types of shoppers, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): While this answer choice may be accurate, it does not reflect the principle manifest in the stimulus. Alienation may not be good for business, but the main point of the stimulus is that the plan based on positive intent may lead to certain detrimental outcomes.

Answer choice (C): The stimulus is not about the amount of thinking that goes into a plan, or about whether discussed plans fail per se, so this answer choice fails to reflect the principle from the stimulus.

Answer choice (D): The author does not even reference distraction—shoppers are driven to the back of the store, we are told, by specific and deliberate placement of goods—so this answer choice is incorrect

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. The supermarket layout manipulates people to walk through and perhaps stay longer, but this plan can also have the detrimental side-effect of alienation.

[Mustafaabdulmalek]

about answer choices I don't see how answer choice E is better than B unless the question is a Main point question otherwise
answer B speak about Customers and Business and Alienation but E talk about people in general and about Manipulation which is far more broad and different from the stimulus

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Thanks for your question!

We actually don't know from the passage how (or whether) alienating customers impacts business - we know people don't like it, but who knows whether that impacts where they shop? It just doesn't say.

But we DO know from the passage that trying to manipulate people (in this case, by making them walk to the back of the store) can have unintended consequences (making them dislike supermarkets).

Hope that helps!

[Mustafaabdulmalek]

I hope that I could say so but you just restate the explanation in the book differently
thank you

[Steve Stein]

Hey Mustafa,

That's a great question, and I'd like to add a bit to Ellen's response. In that one, we are told that supermarkets are set up so that people have to walk to the end of the store to pick up a staple product such as a loaf of bread, so that they have to pass by many tempting options along the way. However, the author points out, this practice can alienate customers, whose main reason for disliking supermarkets is inconvenience.

Supermarket layouts deliberately force people to walk a long way for basic items.
Survey respondents list inconvenience as the main reason that they don't like supermarkets.
Thus, this common supermarket practice can alienate customers.

The question that follows asks which principle the stimulus most precisely illustrates. You allude to a good point with the reference to the author's main point, because the correct answer choice should be illustrated by the conclusion above. That leads us to answer choice (E), which provides the general principle that manipulation (in this case, by the supermarkets) can have unwelcome consequences (in this case, alienation).

Answer choice (B) is a clever wrong answer which provides that alienation is bad for business. But the stimulus deals more with the supermarket practice leading to alienation, rather than illustrating the idea that alienation is bad for business. And, as Ellen pointed out, the author of the stimulus doesn't really say anything about the effects of alienation on business, so that choice fails the Fact Test and can be ruled out of contention.

Tough question! I hope this is helpful—please let me know if this is clear—thanks!

~Steve

[Mustafaabdulmalek]

So when I see illustrate that's mean that the answer somehow should be more about the general picture since the stimulus containe a conclusion ?

[Laura Carrier]

Hi Mustafa,

It’s not the word “illustrate” that should tell you to look for a big-picture answer choice here. It’s actually the fact that this is a principle question. Keeping in mind that a principle is a general rule that can be used to test the correctness of a conclusion about a particular case (or set of facts) that falls under its scope, when you are asked to choose the proposition (or principle, or general rule) that is most precisely illustrated by the stimulus, you need to look for the principle or rule that is most consistent with (and supportive of) the argument in the stimulus.

Because it’s a principle, it will necessarily be more broad than the specific situation discussed in the stimulus, since the argument in the stimulus is intended to be a single case that falls under the more general rule. The word “illustrate” is just one of LSAC’s many colorful ways of saying that they want you to choose the principle that provides the most support for the conclusion reached in the stimulus.

Since the premises in this stimulus tell us that (1) supermarkets place popular items in the rear in order to manipulate customers into passing tempting displays, and (2) surveys show that customers dislike being inconvenienced, the stimulus author concludes that this practice can actually alienate customers. You need to find a general rule among the answer choices that provides support for this conclusion. If it’s true in general that manipulating people can have unwelcome consequences, this broad rule supports the argument that, in this specific instance, a supermarket’s manipulation of its customers may have the unwelcome consequence of alienating them. Thus, the rule (or proposition or principle) in answer choice (E) is illustrated by the specific facts and reasoning of the stimulus.

I hope that helps to clarify what you are being asked to do by this question type!
Laura

[adlindsey]

I don't see a difference between C & E!

[Dave Killoran]

I don't see a difference between C & E!

Ok, so that will happen at times. What do you do at those points, just give up? I know you're not going to do that, so again let's go back to the basics here. First, we know that differences exist between (C) and (E). Instead of us telling you what they are, how about you tell us how the two are different, because they sure aren't worded identically. There's always a reason wrong answers are wrong. Look again—why is (C) wrong here?

[adlindsey]

Anyway, well thought out plans can be inferred from the first sentence, since they are not accidental. And it continues explaining the plan. These plans fail because they alienate and cause shoppers to dislike! The wording "can" matches both the answer choice and what's in the stimulus!