Twenty percent of the stores in Morganville's downtown shopping distri

Twenty percent of the stores in Morganville's downtown shopping district will fail within five years because they will be competing directly with the SaveMart discount department store newly opened in East Morganville. The downtown shopping district has lost business at this rate before and has always completely rebounded. Confidence that it will rebound again from the losses it is now about to suffer is ill founded, however, because ________ .

WE NEED something that explains why the downtown shopping district will not be able to rebound from the losses unlike before...

(A) the stores like to be put out of business by direct competition from SaveMart are the downtown shopping district's anchor stores, on whose ability to draw shoppers many of the other downtown stores depend.
If stores to be put out of business are the ANCHOR stores that other depends on, then it will be hard to recuperate. This is a keeper. Let's keep this for now.

(B) the bus line that has long connected the downtown area of Morganville with EastMorganville has a tradition of carrying shoppers who reside in East Morganville into downtown Morganville to shop.
What if majority of the shoppers are non-bus riders... These majority will drive the possibility of recovery for the downtown district... WE have to assume a little more to make this work... And BUS is accessible to both the downtown and the new SaveMart... competition is not helped if both shops are equally accessible...

(C) when the downtown shopping district has rebounded before, the business premises of a failed business were typically taken over by a business of same kind as had been there before
This describes what happened in the past when a business failed. This has no bearing or explanation on whether to recover in the new case at hand is possible. OUT!

(D) SaveMart's business plan for the EastMorgalvill store is based on earning low profits, if any, during the first five years of the store's existence.
This explains the cheap price of the SaveMart, as mentioned already in the argument "discount department stores".... No additional info on whether the shopping district will be able to recover... UNLIKE in A.... A so far is a contender.

(E) it is conceivable that the downtown shopping district could shrink substantially without collapsing altogether
Shrinking without collapsing altogether.. shows that there is a chance... This is opposite of what we need...

Answer: A

The Downtown Shopping District has suffered losses before but it has rebounded. However this time it will not rebound. The correct answer should indicate a difference between the past conditions and the current conditions, the difference that would cause the Downtown shopping district NOT to rebound this time. Option A states this difference:

This time the losses will be due to closing of some key stores of the Downtown Shopping district - therefore the district would not be able to come back in business. These key stores attract customers for other "non-key" stores as well. So both key-stores and non-key stores will suffer this time. Previously the non-key stores suffered, therefore there was a temporary loss of business, because customers still used to come for the key-stores, eventually giving rise to development of new non-key stores and causing a rebound in business.

why C is wrong? I really cannot know which choice is better, A or C.

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Which of the following most logically completes the argument below?

Twenty percent of the stores in Morganville's downtown shopping district will fail within five years because they will be competing directly with the SaveMart discount department store newly opened in East Morganville. The downtown shopping district has lost business at this rate before and has always completely rebounded. Confidence that it will rebound again from the losses it is now about to suffer is ill founded, however, because ________ .

(A) the stores like to be put out of business by direct competition from SaveMart are the downtown shopping district's anchor stores, on whose ability to draw shoppers many of the other downtown stores depend.

(B) the bus line that has long connected the downtown are of Morganville with EastMorganville has a tradition of carrying shoppers who reside in EastMorganville into downtown Morganville to shop.

(C) when the downtown shopping district has rebounded before, the business premises of a failed business were typically taken over by a business of same kind as had been there before

(D) SaveMart's business plan for the EastMorgalvill store is based on earning low profits, if any, during the first five years of the store's existence.

(E) it is conceivable that the downtown shopping district could shrink substantially without collapsing altogether


The conclusion is that the downtown district will suffer because a new store has opened that will compete with the exisiting and wont bounce back.
We need a reason for the same.

Option c may or mat not be true! we cannot say for sure that this time it will happen for sure. Even if C were to be true we need a reason that supports why the businesses wont recover.
Option Cdoesnt do that.
Hence A is the best fit here. It gives a reason why the businesses wont recover.

Understanding the argument -
20% of M's downtown shopping district will fail - opinion. Why? Because they'll compete directly with the SaveMart discount stores.
The downtown shopping district has lost businesses at this rate (what rate? 20%), but it has recovered.
It'll not recover this time - main conclusion. Why? We have to provide that reason.

(A) the stores like to be put out of business by direct competition from SaveMart are the downtown shopping district's anchor stores, on whose ability to draw shoppers many of the other downtown stores depend. - Perfect. This is creating a ripple effect. Not only 20% of the stores will fail, but the customers shopping at these stores may constitute, say, some high number, 80% of the customers for other stores. This sounds like a big problem, and it strengthens the main conclusion.

(B) the bus line that has long connected the downtown area of Morganville with EastMorganville has a tradition of carrying shoppers who reside in EastMorganville into downtown Morganville to shop. - "It HAS a tradition," so it's still transporting. What has changed? Nothing. Distortion as it uses some familiar words from the argument and comes up with some random option.

(C) when the downtown shopping district has rebounded before, the business premises of a failed business were typically taken over by a business of same kind as had been there before - It talks about what has happened before, but our scope is limited to "the confidence is ill-founded" to explain why its ill-founded now. What has changed now? This option is, at best, out of scope.

(D) SaveMart's business plan for the EastMorgalvill store is based on earning low profits, if any, during the first five years of the store's existence. - out of scope.

(E) it is conceivable that the downtown shopping district could shrink substantially without collapsing altogether - the question here is not whether it will shrink substantially or collapse. The question here is that "the confidence is ill-founded" or "the downtown will not recover." At best its out of scope.

AnishPassi - Your valuable inputs on this question?

I am very confused on how to eliminate C. Isn't the choice stating that in the past (the failed premise was taken over by other similar business - may be a shoe store taken by a shoe store) is different from the present condition wherein a discount departmental store has opened in place of other stores.

In A, there is no bifurcation on why we can't expect the rebound to happen. Choice A might be true even in the earlier phases when the rebound happened. There is no distinction.

Can you please clarify what I have missed here?

TIA

Hi AnthonyRitz

Why Option C is wrong ?



If the business premises of a failed business were typically taken over by a business of same kind then the type of business (department stores) that failed because of SaveMart discount departments will occupy the empty business premises.

So if new department stores will occupy the place of failed department stores then the NEW DEPARTMENT STORES wont be able to compete with SaveMart discount department. Hence , they will fail again.

Consequently, the shopping district will not rebound again.

Regards

Iwillget770, good question. C is definitely the toughest wrong answer here. The problem is that it's speculative in multiple different ways, making it a bit too weak to be correct.

Specifically, we don't know whether a pattern that took place previously is bound to repeat in the future. Sure, in the past, when a business failed in the normal course of things, a similar business replaced it, because why not? The prior business was probably at least of a type well-suited for this location. But if suddenly a bunch of stores fail because they can't compete with a big discounter, then probably people won't open new stores that are of the same type and that as a result similarly can't compete with the discounter. So it's not just an Appeal to History Fallacy; it's an Appeal to History where, in this case, the prior pattern probably won't hold.

Alternatively, even if the businesses would once again be replaced by others of the same type, we don't know enough about whether others of the same type might be able to compete better with SaveMart. Perhaps the current department stores are ill-suited, but new department stores of the same type could make some changes in order to better compete. We just don't know, and that's a second layer of speculation.

Now, maybe you're thinking "if they make enough changes that they can compete better, then they're not of the same kind." But we cannot hold "kind" that strictly. After all, C claims that in the past the stores that failed "were typically taken over by a business of same kind," but the argument itself says that the shopping district "has always completely rebounded." So it's possible to still be "of the same kind" and yet be different enough in some ways to compete better than the failed previous store did.

So, in short,

(1) We don't know that the historical trend will repeat this time;
(2) We in fact have reason to doubt that the historical trend will repeat this time; and
(3) It is unclear whether the new stores would fail even if the historical trend did, in fact, repeat this time.

That's too much speculation and doubt for C to be the right answer.

I hope this helps!
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