Advertisement: Today's customers expect high quality. Every advance in

I just got this question wrong in the OG, but I disagree with the OA. I believe (A) is the best choice. Here's my argument.



The main point here is that MegaCorp's goal is ONLY to meet or exceed customer expectations. We have three logical statements here:

1. If the quality of a product advances, then customer expectations will increase.
2. If a company - ANY company, including (but not exclusively) MegaCorp - does not bother to improve the quality of their products in the face of advancement, their customers will not have their expectations met.
3. MegaCorp will always try to meet or exceed its customers' expectations.

So what conclusions can we draw here? From 1+2, we see that customers will be satisfied with a product as long as that product meets their expectations. Their expectations will increase if that product were to get better in the marketplace (we can specify this because obviously if the company in question were to advance the quality of their product, their customers will already be happy with it). If the company did not improve their own quality to match this advancement, the customers will no longer have their expectations met.

MegaCorp's goal is to meet those expectations. But those expectations will ONLY go up if a product's quality advances. What if a product is at its absolute maximum and can no longer be advanced? Then customers expectations will stay at their same level, and MegaCorp's goal will continue to be met.

Considering all of this, (C) cannot possibly be correct:



MegaCorp is constantly improving the quality of their products to meet or exceed whatever advancements are made. If no more advances are possible, then MegaCorp can't NOT meet their goal, because their customers will not increase their expectations!

Now, look at choice (A):



Like I said above in #2, the ad says that ANY company (not just MegaCorp) that fails to improve their product quality will also fail to satisfy their customers' rising expectations. If MegaCorp's competitors don't have the same goal of satisfying their customers, then when a product advancement comes along, they won't improve their quality, and their customers will be unhappy. Those customers will see that MegaCorp (or any other company, really) IS improving their quality, and will instead go to the other company.

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I spent a lot of time thinking about this problem, and I still believe (C) is wrong. Any thoughts?

Hope it helps.

No... I said that opposite. Megacorp's goal is only to meet their customers' expectations. If product quality doesn't advance, then customers' expectations will not rise. So if advancement isn't possible, then advancement won't happen, which means customers won't raise their expectations. And if Megacorp is meeting their customers' expectations (and if the ad is true, they always will be), and their customers cannot possibly raise their expectations (because advancement isn't possible), then Megacorp has not only met their goal, but they can't STOP meeting their goal, because their customers will not raise their expectations.

The only way Megacorp won't meet their goal is if customers raise their expectations and Megacorp does not increase the quality of their products to match it. If advancement can't happen, then customers can't raise their expectations. So (C) can't be right, because it implies that even if advancement can't happen, customers will still raise their expectations. But we know from the advertisement that customers won't raise their expectations unless advancement happens. It's basically stating the exact OPPOSITE of what we're assuming is true.



But the article says that customers' expectations will rise if advancement happens. It doesn't say that expectations will rise irregardless of advancement. Why would they put that sentence about advancement if it were irrelevant in this way? And, logically, how could consumers raise expectations about the quality of a product if that quality couldn't even improve beyond what already exists? I know that's beyond the scope of the question/GMAT, but it doesn't make sense in reality.

Eliminate based on extrimalities.

Advertisement : Today's customers expect high quality.Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations.The company that is satisfied with the current quality of its products will find that its customers are not. AT MegaCorp,meeting or exceeding customer expectations is our goal.

Which of the following is a conclusion to the above :

A)MegaCorp's competitors will succeed in attracting customers only if those competitors adopt MegaCorp's goal as thier own.
B)A company that does not correctly anticipate the expectations of its customers is certain to fail in advancing the quality of its products.
C)Megacorp's goal is possible to meet only if continuing advances in product quality are possible. Cautious and quite tentative language
D)If a company becomes satisfied with the quality of its products,then the quality of its products is sure to decline.
E)Megacorp's customers are currently satisfied with the quality of its products.- We don't know this unsupported.

Advertisement: Today's customers expect high quality. Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations. The company that is satisified with the current quality of its products will soon find that its customers are not. At MegaCorp, meeting or exceeding customer expectations is our goal!
Which of the following must be true on the basis of the statements in the advertisement above?
A) MegaCorp's competitors will succeed in attracting customers only if those competitors adopt MegaCorp's goal as their own.--> not necessary ,this is nowhere implied in the passage.They can have other strategies too !!
B) A company that does not correctly anticipate the expectations of its customers is certain to fail in advancing the quality of their products.-->We know that customer expectation leads to improvement of the product.But the reverse may or may not be true.
C) MegaCorp's goal is possible to meet only if continuing advances in product quality is possible.-->can say for sure from the passage.Only if there is a possibility to improve there can be some improvement.
D) If a company becomes satisifed with the quality of its products, then the quality of its products will decline.-->wrong cannot infer from the passage.
E) MegaCorp's customers are currently satisfied with the quality of its products.-->no they are not satisfied .Their expectations keeps changing.

I was confused between B &C and finally picked c but still confused about B.Why b is wrong?

The question stem states that "Today's customers expect high quality. Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations."

But the negation, not correctly anticipating the customer expectations leads to fall in quality is wrong. What if I "wrongly anticipated" the customer expectations on the positive side of the quality? I will achieve better quality right? Hence B is wrong!

im confused between B & C
For C- My thinking is Even if there is no product quality advances then also Megacorp is "there" in the market (with the latest technology existing) hence it is able to meet its customers expectations.

B. (Correct as per me)- Although "certain" is strong but apart from that everything is as per the advertisement.

C is correct;

B says "A company that does not correctly anticipate the expectations of its customers is certain to fail in advancing the quality of their products."

not b, because even if the organizations do not correctly anticipate the expectations of the customer, you can still improve the quality of the products. Let's take an example: Customers expect the product to be 10 times better, but the company only anticipated the customer expectation to be 5 times; now even though the customer expectations were not accounted for correctly, you would still have a better quality product.

Hope it is clear

I'll go with C. Here's my explanation:
Point 1: every advancement in manufacturing of product raises customer expectations. Thus, customers will always want something a step ahead.
Point 2: The goal of the company is to meet the ever rising expectations.

SO, if going a step ahead is not possible after a certain stage, the raised up expectation of the customer will not be satisfied.

Show some love! Kudos if this helped.

Advertisement: Today's customers expect high quality. Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations. The company that is satisified with the current quality of its products will soon find that its customers are not. At MegaCorp, meeting or exceeding customer expectations is our goal.

Which of the following must be true on the basis of the statements in the advertisement above?

A) MegaCorp's competitors will succeed in attracting customers only if those competitors adopt MegaCorp's goal as their own.
No mention about the competitor. Probably quality strategy doesn't work with them. Maybe if they bring down their prices with same quality, they might be able to outrun Mega Corp.
B) A company that does not correctly anticipate the expectations of its customers is certain to fail in advancing the quality of their products.
It is the other way around. Advancing the quality raise the expectation and then expectation raises the quality.

C) MegaCorp's goal is possible to meet only if continuing advances in product quality is possible.
MegaCorp's goal is to exceed customers expectation and it can only be done if the quality of the product exceeds.

D) If a company becomes satisfied with the quality of its products, then the quality of its products will decline.
If a company becomes satisfied with the quality of product, the demand many decline as the customers expectation might have reached another level.

E) MegaCorp's customers are currently satisfied with the quality of its products.
We aren't sure about that.

Hope this helps!

Official Explanation

Argument Construction

This question requires us to identify a statement that can be inferred on the basis of the statements made in the advertisement.

The advertisement states that every improvement in the quality of manufactured products leads to increased expectations among customers, yet that MegaCorp has a goal of meeting or exceeding its customers' expectations.

It follows that MegaCorp will continually be able to meet this goal only if it is possible for it to continue improving the quality of its products.

A. The information in the advertisement provides support for the idea that customers are more likely to buy products that are of the highest available quality. However, there is nothing in the advertisement to indicate that the only way for any of MegaCorp's competitors to produce the highest quality product would be to adopt MegaCorp's goal.

B. There is nothing in the advertisement to support this claim. A company could, for instance, improve the quality of a product in ways that are different from what customers expect.

C. Correct. To meet or exceed ever-increasing demands for improved quality requires that continuing advances in product quality are in fact possible.

D. The advertisement suggests that a company that is satisfied with the quality of its products can, at the very least, maintain the current quality of its products. There is nothing to suggest that the quality of these products will actually decline.

E. The passage provides no evidence that MegaCorp has been successful at reaching its goal of meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

The correct answer is C.

Argument - Any improvement in quality will raise the expectation of the customer about the product quality. For this it follows that if a compay improves the product quality, say the company provides sunroof in the cars, then customers will demand something more, say the customers will now demand that the sunroof should automatically open/close based on weather conditions.
In addition to that, MG's goal is to meet customer expectations.

From argument we can understand that the customer expectations are never constant. If MG's goal is to meet customer expectations, it will have to constantly update its products as the customer expectation is always going to increase with every new feature provided in the products

(A) MegaCorp's competitors will succeed in attracting customers only if those competitors adopt MegaCorp's goal as their own.
- Not necessarily. What if MG has not been able to deliver on the stated goal. Thus is always short of the meeting expectations. In such a case, the competitor does not have to adopt the goal. The competitor can attract customers even if does not adopt the goals and provides products that are slightly better but still short of the expectations

(B) A company that does not correctly anticipate the expectations of its customers is certain to fail in advancing the quality of their products.
- Not necessarily. May be the company could not anticipate the expectation of growth in smartphones. But still the company continued to bring in more features in the feature phone

(C) MegaCorp's goal is possible to meet only if continuing advances in product quality is possible.
- As explained. The customer expectations will always increase. For the company to meet the expectations the company has to continously improve the quality. Only when the company improves the quality will it be able to meet the expectations.
_Correct

(D) If a company becomes satisifed with the quality of its products, then the quality of its products will decline.
- The quality does not have to decrease. It can remain constant
- Wrong

(E) MegaCorp's customers are currently satisfied with the quality of its products.
- We do not know if MG is meeting its goal
-Wrong

But customers raise their expectations because of the continuing advances in manufacturing of the products. if that doesnt happen, then customers expectations also would not rise and megacorp would continue meeting the standardss. I dont understand How C is correct hence. any help? nightblade354

I am not an expert, but I will try to answer the question-
The third statement is given as "The company that is satisified with the current quality of its products will soon find that its customers are not".
This address your query. Let us consider that there are no advances in manufacturing. This statement is equivalent to "company that is satisfied with the current quality of its products".
But the rest of sentence says "the company will soon find its customers are not". This means that the customers will expect something new in the quality of products or in other words the customer has raised its expectations. Thus a customer is never satisfied and keeps raising its expectations!

I hope the explanation helps!

Advertisement: Today’s customers expect high quality. - Sure

Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations. - As the quality of products advances so do customer expectations, and that too for every advance in quality.

The company that is satisfied with the current quality of its products will soon find that its customers are not. - Customers stop being satisfied with the quality of products of companies that are satisfied with the quality.

At MegaCorp, meeting or exceeding customer expectations is our goal. - The company’s goal is to continually meet or exceed customer expectations.

Gist: Customers’ definition of high-quality becomes more stringent with every advance in quality. A company that is satisfied with the current quality will soon see its customers stop being satisfied. And, the company’s goal is to meet or exceed customer expectations.


We’re looking for something that can be inferred on the basis of the passage. Customer expectations rise with an improvement in quality, and the company’s goal is to meet or exceed them. So, we can infer that in order to meet its goal, the company will continually try to work toward advancing quality. Of course, there could be other inferences as well.


(A) MegaCorp's competitors will succeed in attracting customers only if those competitors adopt MegaCorp's goal as their own.
Incorrect. We do not know what all factors ‘attract customers’. For example, while customers might expect high quality, they might be okay to compromise on quality for a low price. There is nothing given in the passage to infer that customers get attracted on the basis of quality alone. Besides, even if we are told that customers are attracted on the basis of quality alone, still we cannot infer this option since a company that does not have Mega Corp’s goal may still produce far better products than Mega Corp does.

(B) A company that does not correctly anticipate the expectations of its customers is certain to fail in advancing the quality of their products.
Incorrect. The passage nowhere talks about either correctly anticipating the expectations of the customers or the consequences of it. Even from a common-sense perspective, a company may advance the quality of its products without correctly anticipating the expectations of its customers. The only way to advance the quality of products is not through correctly anticipating the expectations of customers. E.g. a company may improve the quality of products simply on the basis of a gut-feel.

A test-taker may not anticipate what kind of questions the teacher will ask. He may still study thoroughly, succeeding on the test. Advancing the quality of products is not necessarily based solely on correctly anticipating the expectations of customers.

(C) MegaCorp's goal is possible to meet only if continuing advances in product quality is possible.
Correct. With every increase in product quality, customer expectations rise further. Since the company’s goal is to meet/ exceed expectations, their goal is indeed possible to meet only if continuing advances are possible.
The option does not just say ‘continuing advances in product quality are possible’. That could not be inferred. It says that the goal is possible to meet only if continuing advances are possible. That makes sense. If continuing advances in quality are not possible, eventually customer expectations will go beyond product quality and thus the company will stop meeting its goal.

(D) If a company becomes satisifed with the quality of its products, then the quality of its products will decline.
Incorrect. Say a company becomes satisfied with the quality and thus stops working on improving quality. All that tells us is that the quality of products will not further improve. We cannot infer that the quality ‘is sure to decline’. The quality may very well remain at the current level.

(E) MegaCorp's customers are currently satisfied with the quality of its products.
Incorrect. The advertisement never gets into what the current satisfaction level of the customers is. Moreover, all we know is that meeting or exceeding customer expectations is the company’s goal. There is nothing given to suggest whether the goal is currently being met.

If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask.