Bunuel
Last year three automobile manufacturers—Honda, Toyota, and Suzuki—launched new models of their respective sedans in Japan. The three models that were launched were similarly priced and had similar features. However, the sales of Suzuki’s new sedan have been far lower than those of Honda and Toyota’s new sedans in the past one year.
The statements above best support which of the following as a conclusion?
(A) The people in Japan prefer cars manufactured by Toyota and Honda to those manufactured by Suzuki.
(B) The people in Japan do not like cars manufactured by Suzuki.
(C) Cars manufactured by Suzuki are notorious for their flimsy build quality and poor fuel efficiency.
(D) In the last one year, Suzuki has earned less revenues from the sale of its new sedan than have Honda and Toyota.
(E) Suzuki manufactures its cars primarily for the export market and not for domestic sale.
Official Explanation
Do remember that the stimulus of an Inference question may not necessarily be in the form of an argument. In fact, most of the times the stimulus will contain a set of facts like the one above does.
All that the above stimulus tells us is that Honda, Toyota, and Suzuki have each launched a new sedan last year and that the sales of Honda and Toyota’s new sedans have been far greater than the sales of Suzuki’s new sedan. These are all facts and the author does not provide any conclusion on the basis of these facts.
Inference Must be True and NOT May be TrueOne very important thing to keep in mind while evaluating options on an Inference question is that the correct option must be true under all conditions/possibilities. There may be some options which may be true under some situations and may not be true under others. These will not be the correct answer.
With this background, let’s go through each of the options in the above question and see if we can arrive at the correct answer:
(A) This seems very obvious but such inferences must be avoided. For all you know, people in Japan might actually prefer Suzuki cars the most but due to some supply constraints, Suzuki’s new sedan may not be available in the market.
(B) The earlier explanation applies to this option as well. In fact this option goes a step further by concluding that Japanese people do not like Suzuki cars at all. Since this may or may not be the case, this cannot be the correct answer.
(C) This looks very logical because it provides a very convincing reason why the sales of Suzuki’s cars have been low. But are we actually required to explain why the sales of Suzuki’s new sedan have been low? Absolutely not. So this option does not even come close to being an Inference. It merely explains why the sales of Suzuki’s new sedan may have been low but that is not what we are required to do in the argument.
(D) The correct answer. The argument tells us that the three new sedans are similarly priced. Then if Suzuki has sold fewer cars (and by a large margin) than have Honda and Toyota, its revenues from the sale of this new sedan have to be lower than those of Honda and Toyota. This option must be true in all cases and, hence, has to be the correct answer.
(E) Like option C, this option again provides a logical explanation for Suzuki’s low sales in Japan but this may or may not be the case. In any case, we are not required to provide an explanation in the first place. So, this cannot be a valid inference.