adkikani wrote:
Hi
GMATNinja generis GMATNinjaTwo We need to select an answer choice that increases our plan that improvement of response rates will be more effective if we implement targeted advertising .
My query is regarding B, D and E.
Quote:
Is B out because of phrase - many successful companies. But then why we can not equate better response rates to mail advertising to successful companies?
The success of those companies MIGHT be due to their advertising strategies, but we don't know that for sure. Maybe those companies are successful for a variety of other reasons
despite having low response rates.
Quote:
Is D out because of phrase - CAN IMPROVE- However in main Q stem, it is clearly mentioned treat this option as true, so clearly improving quality of material sent to targeted individuals results in increase in response rates from customers.
The recommendation is not to improve the
quality of the advertising materials. Rather, the recommendation is to more carefully target the individuals to whom companies mail advertising. So if quality remains the same and we start sending carefully targeted ads, will our response rates increase? (D) doesn't help answer that question.
Quote:
Is not E a sort of assumption for this argument?
(E) is not quite a required assumption. Notice that (E) compares targeted ads by mail to MOST other forms of advertising. The passage is only concerned with improving the response rate to ads by mail. Maybe compared to other types of advertising, ads by mail are relatively ineffective. Still, if we could improve these low response rates by using
targeted ads by mail, then we would want to follow the recommendation.
The improved response rates only have to be higher than those of NON-targeted ads by mail. The improved response rates do not necessarily have to be higher than those of MOST other forms of advertising.
So choice (E) is not a REQUIRED assumption, but it certainly supports the recommendation. The author recommends targeted ads by mail to improve response rates. Choice (E) tells us that response rates to targeted ads by mail are considerably higher than response rates to most other forms of advertising. This supports a switch to targeted ads by mail, so (E) is the best answer.
TaN1213 wrote:
In my opinion E is flawed because it involves comparison with
other forms of advertising such as advertising in websites, newspapers, banners etc with advertisements in mail.
Not only the comparison seems irrelevant, it also is flawed because of the following case:
assume response rates from newspapers(other means) be zero and that from targeted mail (TM) is 5. Interesting part is that nowhere from E can we deduce that response rate from non-targeted mail(NTM) was less than 5, and hence conclude that TM is more effective than NTM.
Hello
GMATNinja ,
Would you please let me know whether I am wrong in my point stated above?
Thank you.
You are right in that choice (E) does not PROVE that the recommendation will improve response rates. As you pointed out, we can think of scenarios in which choice (E) does not necessarily mean that the recommendation will improve response rates.
But we are looking for an answer choice that MOST supports the recommendation, not one that PROVES that the recommendation will improve response rates.
Also, we are told that "Advertising by mail has become much less effective" and that most consumers "discard almost all {mail} offers without considering them". Given that information, it doesn't seem likely that NTM is MORE effective than MOST other forms of advertising, as it is in your example.
By POE, (E) is the best answer.
_________________
GMAT/GRE/EA tutors @
www.gmatninja.com (
hiring!) |
YouTube |
Articles |
IG Beginners' Guides:
RC |
CR |
SC |
Complete Resource Compilations:
RC |
CR |
SC YouTube LIVE webinars:
all videos by topic +
24-hour marathon for UkraineQuestion Explanation Collections:
RC |
CR |
SC