veenu08 wrote:
Singing in the Rain Umbrella Corp. plans to institute a marketing campaign in which it sells umbrellas at the exits of subway stations during rainy weather. The umbrellas will be sold at a price that is slightly higher than normal. The company thinks the sales of these higher - priced umbrellas will be greater than normal sales of umbrellas, because the purchasers of these umbrellas will be forced to buy them if they do not want to get wet.
The author assumes which of the following about the purchasers of the umbrellas in predicting the sales of the umbrellas?A. Customers who do not feel immediate pressure to purchase will not do so.
B. Normally priced umbrellas are not profitable for singing in the Rain Umbrellas Corp.
C. Very few people buy Singing in the Rain’s normally priced umbrellas.
D. Singing in the Rain Umbrellas Corp. will have to stop selling normally priced umbrellas when it starts selling higher priced
umbrellas.
E. Most potential customers of Singing in the Rain’s higher priced umbrellas will not have acquired an umbrella previously.
Princeton Review Official Explanation:
Assume is an obvious key word. Work the argument: C: Sales of umbrellas at subway exits while it’s raining will be greater than normal sales.
P: People will be forced to buy umbrellas if they don’t want to get wet.
A: They don’t have umbrellas with them. They are unwilling to get wet.
POE: In (B), profitability of normally priced umbrellas is irrelevant.
In (C), sales of normally priced umbrellas are irrelevant.
(D) doesn’t deal with the issue.
(E) looks good, but it’s not right. Potential customers might have umbrellas, but the issue is whether they have an umbrella with them.
(A) makes the link. If it’s raining and you don’t have an umbrella, you feel the pressure to make a purchase. On some assumption questions, you may have a lot of difficulty spotting the necessary assumption due to the way the answers are worded. This is particularly true with answer choices containing negative words such as not and never. One way to check whether an answer choice is a necessary assumption is to negate, or reverse, that answer. If the negation would weaken the argument, that answer is a necessary assumption.