Spokespersons for various brands of toothpaste, soap, etc. consumer go

I will go with C. Below is my explanation :

Premise : Spokespersons themselves do not regularly use the brands that they endorse.

Conclusion : This may not only harm the marketing efforts of the company that owns the brands, it also indicates that the products are of inferior quality.

A. Spokespersons endorse only those brands they use. -- We don't know. Too extreme to infer.

B. Quality(neither price, nor variety) is the only determinant for the spokespersons to choose a particular brand. -- Again Too Extreme to infer.

C. If customers get to know that spokespersons do not use the brands they endorse, then they might shift to other brands. -- Conclusion states that it might harm marketing efforts. What does that mean? It means people may stop using these products. And they may shift to different products. Hence, a strong inference.

D. Spokespersons endorse only those brands that are of superior quality. -- Too Extreme to infer.
E. None of the above. -- Incorrect as we have found C as the correct answer.
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Assumption : Spokenpersons don't regularly use the brands that they endorse and this hurts the companies that own the brands. It indicates the products are inferior quality.

Endorsers might think the products quality is not good or they think that there job is only to endorse. But without experiencing the product the endorser can't give the full picture of the product.


A. Spokespersons endorse only those brands they use. --> They do endorse which they don't use...incorrect
B. Quality(neither price, nor variety) is the only determinant for the spokespersons to choose a particular brand.--> They don't mind about the quality..Incorrect.
C. If customers get to know that spokespersons do not use the brands they endorse, then they might shift to other brands.--> Not given in the argument.
D. Spokespersons endorse only those brands that are of superior quality.--> Not given in the passage...they do endorse inferior quality products too...incorrect
E None of the above.

Let me know the correct answer...I'll correct in case if I missed anything.

I think the answer should be B. The author says that if spokesperson is not using a product, it indicates that the product is of inferior quality. It means that author is assuming that spokesperson only care about the quality of the product and not other factors such as costs, convenience etc.

What is the OA?

This problem appeared at a MBA admission test. I looked into two different solutions from two books and both of the solutions took option 'C' as the answer.
I don't understand the logic behind it.

Can you post the official explanation.

That is where I am stuck. None of them provided any explanations for this question.

Hey abhimahna,

Sorry for the trouble again!

Can you move this to Inference Category and make the OA as C.

Thanks!
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Hey Adi93 ,

Done. Thank you!
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Can you please quote the source of this question. This question has a tricky twist not usually seen in GMAT questions. Inference by definition is a fact that 'must be true' for the conclusion to hold and that is the only reason that would validate C over B.
Conclusion has two parts. Part one suggests not using the endorsed brands may harm marketing efforts i.e. assumption is that spokesperson's use of the product and not just endorsement is important to the customers. Part two suggests the products are of inferior quality wherein the assumption is Quality is a key determinant in spokesperson's use of a product.
We do not know why spokespersons choose not to use it. It may be due to quality but it may be for other reasons and we have no evidence that proves B to be absolutely true. C however can be chosen since its stated that spokespersons not using the product will harm marketing efforts i.e. customers will be influenced.

Hi abhimahna ,

I understand your point regarding the harm to the marketing efforts - if the spokespersons do not use the brand, it reflects badly, and customer can shift to other brands.

But how does it show that the goods are of inferior quality - which is an integral part of the author's conclusions? The spokesperson may be using the other brand because of other reasons - say lower price, availability, variety etc.

Thanks a lot!

Hey jayantbakshi ,

I am happy to help.

Remember this is an inference question. So, I need to find out something that we can retrieve based on what has been given to us. This doesn't mean we need to show that this piece of information relates to every other information given in the argument.

Having said that, since the conclusion is marketing efforts are getting affected, I can very well infer option C. Now, option C must NOT be something also that infers information about the quality.

Another important word you need to look at is "might".

C. If customers get to know that spokespersons do not use the brands they endorse, then they might shift to other brands.

Might itself shows there is a slight possibility. This is true. I am not saying "will", a strong word. Had the option C been "If customers get to know that spokespersons do not use the brands they endorse, then they will shift to other brands.", it would have been a wrong answer choice.

Does that make sense?
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Hi abhimahna,

Thanks so much for taking out time and helping me with this query - indeed very kind of you.
I believe the confusion (for me) stems from the fact that the question itself is only focussing on the quality of the product and not on the mitigation of marketing efforts. It reads, "On which of the following inferences does the author of the passage base his conclusion that the products are of inferior quality?"

Thus (I believe) that the question is asking us to think that - what could be the inference, basis which, the Author has concluded that the 'Quality' of the product is questionable.

I totally did before, and still do, agree with your reasoning that "If customers get to know that spokespersons do not use the brands they endorse, then they might shift to other brands" which "may not only harm the marketing efforts of the company that owns the brands".

Considering that the question is very directly focussed only on the inferior quality of the products, I believed B was a better choice. However, I should not bother you more on this question; in case you do see my point, please do share.

Thanks again for your time and help!

Hey jayantbakshi ,

I am happy to explain it further.

Let me ask you a simple question.

Let's say you want to buy a product. You go to amazon website and found that the ratings were not very good. Would you buy it? I hope your answer will be No.

What does that mean is since the marketing of the product is not good, you will directly consider the product of inferior quality, right?

This is what is happening here.

Since the spokespersons themselves are not using the product, it means marketing efforts are impacted. Since these efforts are impacted, it has direct relationship with the quality of the product.

This is what option C is telling us. If they might shift to other brands, they won't buy this product. If they don't, the ratings of this product will be less than what the ratings of other products would be. Hence, this will indicate that the products are of inferior quality.

Does that make sense?
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This is an assumption question.
we have to find the assumption using which author arrives at his conclusion that "This may not only harm the marketing efforts of the company that owns the brands, it also indicates that the products are of inferior quality."

choice C is correct assumption.

Dear abhimahna,

Thank you again for being so kind and patient. Appreciate you replying to my message. While my intention is not to bother you any further or simply disagree, just for the sake of disagreeing, I respectfully admit that we hold diverse opinions on this one! The reason I believe we are approaching this differently is because we see the "Question" itself differently.

The way I read the question (probably biased & incorrect) is that the question is clearly (itself) putting forward the conclusion of the author, on which we have to comment: "On which of the following inferences does the author of the passage base his conclusion that the products are of inferior quality?". Thus as I see it, the question is:

1. Employee do not use their own company's product
2. This means that the products are inferior

Q: What is the assumption here, basis which, the author has concluded that the products are inferior?
Again, I believe, the question is not at all asking about mitigation of marketing efforts, and thus it is not even relevant to the question.

For example, if I work for a soap manufacturing company, say UniLever but use a soap of P&G - the author has concluded that UniLever's products are inferior. That conclusion would be correct ONLY if the author is assuming that I choose my products ONLY basis their quality - and no other criteria.

While, in reality, I may be using a P&G soap possibly becuase it comes in 'musk' fragrance which may not be available in UniLever. Hope you would appreciate my point.

Again, I think we are seeing the question differently (& I may be reading it incorrectly!).

Sorry for the long message, we could put this to rest

Thanks again for your kindness.

It is indeed a very good question. Most of us fall in the trap because we ignored the marketing part of the conclusion and just focused on the last part, which talks about quality, failing to see that the second part arrived from the first part. I did the same.

I learn, not to ignore any part and read the full sentence before answering. Regards

Sent from my Lenovo K53a48 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

Firstly it was very enigmatic to categorize whether it assumption or inference.
On which of the following inferences does the author of the passage base his conclusion that the products are of inferior quality?
Although in question stem there is a keyword "inferences" but the above marked part is clearly stating what is his assumption for the author's conclusion.
Let me know if my thinking is correct.
TIA

Hello,

I agree that in an inference question, your answer would be correct. However, this is an assumption question because the question states that
"On which .... does the author of the passage base his conclusion"

So here, the answer would be C because this is the gap which connects quality of a product to the usage byspokespersons.