Advertising by mail has become much less effective, with fewer consume

Hello, skycastle19. You are correct in saying that we are not necessarily interested in other forms of advertising. However, the recommendation is based on targeted advertising by mail: to improve response rates, [corporations should] more carefully target the individuals to whom they mail advertising. Thus, if response rates are considerably higher to such ads delivered by mail, as choice (E) informs us, then it would not make sense to adopt the same approach by other means, such as those advertising vehicles you mentioned, and the recommendation would be supported or sound more reasonable. That is all we are after here. Choice (D), as others have pointed out above, focuses on the quality of the ads, which is truly an irrelevant concern. No other answer choice is really in the running. Watch out for those adverbs—significantly here cues us in on a common GMAT™ CR tactic to reveal the correct answer, as though the question-writer wanted to make sure that the statement was qualified enough to make its impact unequivocal. I have pointed out this very tendency in two of my other posts, here and here.

I hope that helps. Thank you for seeking my opinion alongside so many other GMAT Club legends.

- Andrew

Can someones please elaborate on D?
If it is out of scope due to ' quality of advertising materials' then the same reasoning can be true for E- comparison with other mediums

Hi Vartika

We should not only consider parts of the option to be out of scope but the statement as a whole. For instance, in this stimulus, the conclusion is derived as follows:

Too much junk mail --> customers discard all mail --> low response rates of ads by mails

Therefore, carefully target customers --> less junk mail --> better response rates

Option (D) is about the consequence of "quality of advertising materials". This does not appear anywhere in the reasoning chain in the stimulus and is hence out of scope. Option (E), on the other hand, talks about the consequence of "carefully targeted advertisements by mail", which is part of the conclusion of the stimulus and is very much relevant. Merely because there is another factor (comparison with other media) does not make an option out of scope. We need to identify the key issue which is addressed by the option and decide whether it is pertinent to the conclusion or not.

Hope this helps.

Hey Vartikaa14,


Option D - This ultimately reiterates the proposed careful targeting of consumers. Improvements in the quality of mails will work only if the targeting of consumers works. This option does not indicate that targeting the individuals will work or not.

Thus, this is not the correct answer choice.

Option E - This option gives a general data point that acts as evidence to prove the effectiveness of careful targeting of mail recipients.

This is in line with our pre-thinking. If response rates to such carefully targeted mails have been observed to be significantly higher, on average, than those to any other form of advertising, then it stands to reason that the corporations can use this tool to improve response rates to advertising offers sent via mail.

Thus, this is the correct option.

Hope this helps.

Advertising by mail has become much less effective, with fewer consumers responding. Because consumers are increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of junk mail they receive, most discard almost all offers without considering them. Thus, an effective way for corporations to improve response rates would be to more carefully target the individuals to whom they mail advertising, thereby cutting down on the amount of junk mail each consumer receives.

Which of the following, if true, would most support this recommendation?

(A) There are cost effective means by which corporations that currently advertise by mail could improve response rates.

Note that the conclusion of the argument is about the effectiveness of a plan to improve response rates…is cost a factor that we would consider in reality? Absolutely. But, this is not the focus of this passage.

(B) Many successful corporations are already carefully targeting the individuals to whom they mail advertising.

I think this could go either way really. If corporations are already doing it, then that potentially gives us an indication that it’s an effective method. But, we don’t have anything to support that conclusion.

Conversely, this could have the effect of weakening the argument. We know from the passage that few consumers respond because they are concerned by junk mail. Well, if it’s also true that the mail was targeted, then the recommendation loses its weight. I would lead towards this weakening given the rationale that I provided.

(C) Any consumer who, immediately after receiving an advertisement by mail, merely glances at it is very likely to discard it.

Well this just builds on something we already know – that most people discard almost all offers.

(D) Improvements in the quality of the advertising materials used in mail that is carefully targeted to individuals can improve the response rate for such mail.

This is plausible and again is something that would apply in reality. But, it doesn’t address the fundamental gap in the argument – why should we more carefully target people? Where’s the evidence?

(E) Response rates to carefully targeted advertisements by mail are considerably higher, on average, than response rates to most other forms of advertising.

Correct. Bingo. This gives us the additional evidence we need. The desired end goal is to improve response rates and this here provides evidence to support the conclusion by explicitly stating a previously unstated assumption that targeted advertising works better than other methods.

A similar analogy:
Conclusion => Electric cars are fast.
Batteries made out of cobalt used in electric cars can improve speed of those cars.
Electric cars are faster , on average, than most other cars.

WHAT CAN CAUSE response rates to increase is not important but TESTING their LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS is.

(D) Improvements in the quality of the advertising materials used in mail that is carefully targeted to individuals can improve the response rate for such mail. = Incorrect for above reasons.
(E) Response rates to carefully targeted advertisements by mail are considerably higher, on average, than response rates to most other forms of advertising. = Best of all.

After going through the passage, I could identify the following gaps:

1) What if the target marketing is done and even then customers do not respond to the mail because of the poor content?
2) What if the careful targeting still does not reduce the overall number of junk mail customers receive


Moving on to the option choices, I had a confusion between Option D and Option E

Option D: It suggests that the quality improvement of the advertising content results in better response rates. If we include this premise in the argument, it indicates more that the plan will be executed will and response rates will be better. Hence D should be the strengthener.

Option E: It shows that targeted advertising is better than "most" of other forms. Even though it indicates that response rates will be better, but our main point of discussion is between targeted and untargeted way of advertising over mail. Hence this would have no impact on the argument.

What is the flaw in my thinking?

When analyzing a passage, it's a dangerous game to focus on specific "gaps" that pop out to you, for a couple of reasons.

First, there are likely gaps that you haven't identified. For instance, what if a zombie apocalypse breaks out, society degenerates, and there is no mail service any more? That would certainly impact the effectiveness of targeted ads. This is an extreme example, but it shows that there are infinite "gaps" in any argument, so picking out a few is kind of pointless.

Second, by focusing on certain "gaps," you may end up misreading answer choices so that they fit with your pre-thinking.

The author concludes that "an effective way for corporations to improve response rates would be to more carefully target the individuals to whom they mail advertising."

We're trying to support that recommendation. Let's look at (D) and (E):

The author's plan is to more carefully target the recipients of mail ads. (D) talks about an entirely different factor: the quality of advertising materials.

Knowing that increased quality of ads improves response rates doesn't tell us that targeted ads THEMSELVES are effective. So, (D) doesn't support the author's argument. Instead, it just gives us an additional factor to think about.

(D) is out.


You're right that the most relevant comparison in the passage is targeted ads vs. non-targeted ads.

(E) tells us that targeted ads are better than most other forms of advertising.

While there is no proof that non-targeted ads are included in "most other forms of advertising," it's not too much of a leap to say that non-targeted ads are PROBABLY included in that group. So, (E) tells us that targeted ads are PROBABLY more effective than non-targeted ads. So, (E) does provide some support for the argument, even if it doesn't PROVE that targeted ads are more effective than non-targeted ads.

Since we're just looking for the answer choice that supports the argument more than the other answer choices do, (E) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!

Advertising by mail has become much less effective, with fewer consumers responding. Because consumers are increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of junk mail they receive, most discard almost all offers without considering them. Thus, an effective way for corporations to improve response rates would be to more carefully target the individuals to whom they mail advertising, thereby cutting down on the amount of junk mail each consumer receives.

Which of the following, if true, would most support this recommendation?

Question type : Argument + Support

P : advertising by mail got less effective because most are discarded
A : people will look at the mail if the amount of message they receive decreases
C : by carefully targeting individuals, corporations can improve response rates


(A) There are cost effective means by which corporations that currently advertise by mail could improve response rates.
-> We are not interested in cost effective means.

(B) Many successful corporations are already carefully targeting the individuals to whom they mail advertising.
-> The fact that successful corporations are following this practice doesn't necessarily means that they became successful by adopting this process. On the other hand, this could be weakening statement also. If currently successful corporations are experiencing low response rate although they are carefully targeting customers, then our conclusion will not hold.

(C) Any consumer who, immediately after receiving an advertisement by mail, merely glances at it is very likely to discard it.
-> This option actually weakens the argument. Because this option implies that even though the corporation target consumers more carefully, consumers might open the mail but some of them might just discard it.

(D) Improvements in the quality of the advertising materials used in mail that is carefully targeted to individuals can improve the response rate for such mail.
-> Premise nor the conclusion never talked about quality.

(E) Response rates to carefully targeted advertisements by mail are considerably higher, on average, than response rates to most other forms of advertising.
-> Correct, this option implies even though current option rate got lower because corporations spammed, if the advertisements by mail is carefully used, than response rates will be higher.

ChiranjeevSingh

Do you think choice B and E both have the same 'direction' but different 'magnitudes'?
Can you help me with how can one decide that whether choice B has greater magnitude or E?

I eliminated E because the comparison is with other forms of advertising, and we are not sure whether "other" contains "Mails not targeted."

Thank you in advance!

B has no impact since it doesn't say anything about 'response rates' and we're trying to improve response rates. Are these corporations which are doing targeted mail advertising seeing any good response rates? We have no idea.

- CJ

It is all very easy.
We need to start by seeing which option at least connects the major parts of the argument. Then we cacn check if these parts are having the correct relationship as we want them to have. Fortunately that is not the case here, so we end up with a pretty easy answer.
The major parts, that I talked about earlier, of the argument are:
1. Response rateS need to be improved.
2. the way to do it is careful targeting

Only option (E) relates both the parts correctly. No other option even mentions both these parts

Hi AndrewN KarishmaB

The fact that other successful companies have started targeting individuals would result in the delivery of less junk mails to people as a whole. So people are not overwhelmed by the excessive emails anymore. Now since people receive limited amount of mails, sending advertisements to the targeted would now increase the probability of their response as now they have less mails to go through. This could possibly strengthen the argument.

What is wrong with this line of thought?

The author gives an advice to companies - more carefully target individuals to send mails to cut down on what each person gets to get response from customers.

What strengthens it? Knowing that response rates to carefully targeted advertisements by mail are considerably higher. This is option (E)

Option (B) Many successful corporations are already carefully targeting the individuals to whom they mail advertising.

This tells us that some companies are already carefully targeting. The advice is to "more carefully target..." So if you are not targeting, start carefully targeting and if you are already carefully targeting, target even more carefully. The point is to reduce the mail that reaches each consumer.
If some successful companies are already carefully targeting, does it strengthen that one should more carefully target? No. We don't know how and why those companies became successful. Carefully targeting may have nothing to do with the success of the company.
Option (E) clearly links response rate to carefully targeted advertisements and hence makes sense.

Hi Avi - which between the two is the argument exactly ?



How does one know, which chain of commands will be strengthened OR does one NOT know and one has to keep an open mind ?

I personally settled on (ii) only because I thought in CR (like in quant) -- all information is important.

So I looked to inculcate the "less Junk Mail" as part of the chain of events, leading to the final conclusion ('Better Response')

^^^ Just thinking out loud avigutman

In the world of SC -- the red text would be considered as a result of the conclusion in the blue text.

Comma + verb'ing : the present participle is an adverb - describing "How" the verb in the previous clause occurred.

I wasn't sure which of these two scenarios was the case.

I personally thought the 2nd scenario was more probable.

Step 1: Identify the Question

The words if true and support in the question stem indicate that this is a Strengthen the Argument question.

Step 2: Deconstruct the Argument

Mail ad --> Less eff (++ junk)

Conclusion : Target mail ads --> improve resp rate

Step 3: Pause and State the Goal

On Strengthen questions, the correct answer should make the conclusion more likely to be valid. What would make it more likely that the plan to more carefully target mailed advertisements will have its intended effect of increasing response rate?

Step 4: Work from Wrong to Right

(A) The argument focuses on the effects of a particular plan: more targeted advertising to improve response rates. Whether there alternative methods to improve response rates is not relevant.

(B) If anything, this choice weakens the argument. If some companies (successful ones!) are already targeting ads but overall response rates are still declining (as the argument states), then perhaps the plan is not a good one after all.

(C) The argument already states that consumers frequently discard advertisements. This answer does not provide any additional information.

(D) This answer provides an additional means that companies could use to improve response rates: improving the quality of materials. However, this answer does not address whether the plan in the argument (more targeted advertising) will be effective on its own.

(E) CORRECT. This answer provides evidence that the plan will have its intended effect: targeted advertising does generate higher response rates.