Official Solution: In recent years many retailers have begun using a sensory technique called “billboarding” to increase sales of certain products. Billboarding involves filling the air around specific displays with scents tailored to create pleasant emotional associations with the featured products. To attract attention to a swimwear display, for example, retailers may lace the air with hints of coconut or lilac.
Which of the following conclusions can be most properly drawn from the information given above?
A. Billboarding as a technique works best in stores that sell clothing.
B. The scents of coconut and lilac make customers more likely to spend money.
C. A certain percentage of money from increased sales will be required to purchase new scents for continued billboarding.
D. Retailers expect customers to make purchases based on pleasant emotional associations.
E. Sales of products associated with coconut and lilac have been declining over the past several years.
Situation: Retailers have begun using scents in sales displays, hoping that the pleasant associations between product and scent will cause customers to purchase more of the products.
Reasoning:
What conclusion can be drawn from information in the passage? The first statement says that the purpose of billboarding is to increase sales. The second statement explains that this technique works through the creation of
pleasant emotional sensations. It can be concluded, then, that retailers hope that pleasant sensations created by scents will cause customers to purchase more of the featured product.
- The passage makes no claim about which stores are the best candidates for billboarding.
- Coconut and lilac are given as examples of scents, but the passage does not claim that these scents specifically are designed to increase sales.
- Though this may be true, the passage is concerned only with why retailers use billboarding, not with its costs. The cost of scents is outside the scope of this passage.
- This statement properly identifies the reason that retailers use billboarding to increase sales: they count on customers’ positive emotional reactions to make them spend more money.
- The passage does not state that sales of any products have been declining over the past several years.
Answer: D