aragonn wrote:
The manager of BigShoppe, a company that lets customers purchase fresh fruits and vegetables online, suggests that customer orders be packed in extra-strong cartons to eliminate damage during transportation. Though these cartons are more expensive, overall costs would remain unaffected since the additional packaging cost is almost equal to the cost of refunding customers who received damaged fruits and vegetables.
Which of the following would it be most important to ascertain in determining whether implementing the manager’s proposal would have the argued-for effect on costs?
(A) Whether BigShoppe dispatchers habitually send out damaged fruits and vegetables to customers
(B) Whether the transportation companies used by BigShoppe will handle the new cartons carefully
(C) Whether the percentage of refunds that BigShoppe makes is higher than those seen by other online shopping companies
(D) Whether some customers are themselves responsible for the damage caused to the produce
(E) Whether fruits and vegetables are more vulnerable to incurring damage during shipping than are other fragile products.
source - CrackVerbal
The answer is A.
We can solve this question using the
Alternative approach, by going through the answers:
(A) Whether BigShoppe dispatchers habitually send out damaged fruits and vegetables to customers -
if this is true, i.e. if the vegetables are damaged before they are even sent then strong packaging won't help! this is a very important thing to ascertain... looks good!(B) Whether the transportation companies used by BigShoppe will handle the new cartons carefully
the whole point of the strong packaging is that it makes it less important how it is handled. no! (C) Whether the percentage of refunds that BigShoppe makes is higher than those seen by other online shopping companies
irrelevant - we care whether Bigshoppe's expenses will change relative to themselves, not to other companies (D) Whether some customers are themselves responsible for the damage caused to the produce
at first glance this looks like it could be relevant. but consider - even if the customers are responsible, it probably occurs when they are transporting the groceries home, and thus is still very probable that strong packaging will solve the problem. So this is not a relevant fact (E) Whether fruits and vegetables are more vulnerable to incurring damage during shipping than are other fragile products.
irrelevant - we care whether the fruits and vegetables's expenses will drop - we don't care how they compare to other products