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Harley1980
Retired Moderator
Joined: 06 Jul 2014
Last visit: 14 Jun 2024
Posts: 995
Location: Ukraine
Concentration: Entrepreneurship, Technology
GMAT 1: 660 Q48 V33
GMAT 2: 740 Q50 V40
GMAT 2: 740 Q50 V40
Posts: 995
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
35%
(medium)
Question Stats:
71% (01:54) correct
29%
(02:10)
wrong
based on 709
sessions
History
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Not Attempted Yet
The TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax are two models of cars of different manufacturers. These two models have almost identical specifications and features, and they sell for almost the same price. Both were introduced on the market five years ago, and each year, the respective manufacturers spend about the same amount in advertising. In the past five year, the total number of TJ-700's sold is about 80% greater than the total number of Beta Turbomax's sold. Clearly, the advertising firm that created TJ-700 ads created much more effective ads than the firm that created Beta Turbomax ads.
In evaluating the argument, it would be most useful to know which of the following?
(A) How the advertising budgets over the last five years for the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax compare to the budgets over the same period for comparable models of other manufacturers.
(B) Whether the ads for the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax included the address or websites of local dealerships selling these models.
(C) Whether buyers of the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax reported being familiar with the ads of these cars.
(D) What percentage the first two years maintenance costs of each model is of their respective advertising budgets.
(E) Whether buyer of cars of other manufacturers in the last five years are familiar with the ads for the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax.
_________________
In evaluating the argument, it would be most useful to know which of the following?
(A) How the advertising budgets over the last five years for the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax compare to the budgets over the same period for comparable models of other manufacturers.
(B) Whether the ads for the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax included the address or websites of local dealerships selling these models.
(C) Whether buyers of the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax reported being familiar with the ads of these cars.
(D) What percentage the first two years maintenance costs of each model is of their respective advertising budgets.
(E) Whether buyer of cars of other manufacturers in the last five years are familiar with the ads for the TJ-700 and the Beta Turbomax.
_________________
Posts: 4,475
Harley1980
Dear Harley1980,
I'm happy to respond.
I always like seeing posted here a question that I wrote! So, we have two similar models of cars, similar features, similar prices, similar times on the market, but one outsells the other by 80%, a gargantuan difference. Why would this be? The prompt argument thinks the difference is due to advertising; in particular, it thinks that the TJ-700 ads are far superior, and hence responsible for the difference. Hmm.
Of course, what matters most for the conclusion is whether the ads were effective ads, ads that motivated folks to get up and go out and buy one of these cars.
(A) how much a company spends on advertising is not necessarily correlated with how effective the ad is. The history of advertising is simply littered with expensive ads that were complete flops, including some notorious Super Bowl ads. $$ spent on advertising alone would not be revealing. This is not correct.
(B) Hmm. We don't know the medium for these ads: TV ads? Radio ads? Posters in public transit? Billboards? Ads in magazines? Web ads, such as Google ads? We don't know. For a web ad, it would be unusual if there weren't some clickable link. Links sometimes appear in print ads, and rarely in TV and radio ads, and that's not necessarily a problem. If people are motivated to action by a TV or radio ad, a simple websearch will reveal the nearest dealership. This is not necessarily relevant at all.
(C) Bingo! If people buying the TJ-700 point to the ads as what motivated the sale, then those are very effective ads. Conversely, if people don't even remember the ads and, when asked what motivated the sale, point to other factors, then probably the ads were not particularly effective. This is the crucial issue, right here.
(D) An interesting twist. Certain maintenance costs, and how reliable each model is, would play some role in sales, but once again, money spent on advertising does not automatically result in higher quality ads. This is not correct.
(E) We care much less about what buyers of other cars have seen. What matters for the gigantic sales difference of the TJ-700 and Beta Turbomax is what has motivated the folks buying specifically those two models. This choice would be tangentially relevant at best.
The strongest answer here is (C). Does this make sense?
Mike
_________________
Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test Prep
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
Magoosh Test Prep
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
General Discussion
Official Explanation
Two cars of different manufacturers are quite similar and were introduced around the same time. One wildly outsold the other, and the argument attributes this difference to the superiority of one's advertising campaign.
We are asked to evaluate this argument: how do we know whether the ads were responsible for folks buying one car more than the other?
(C) is the credited answer. If folks who bought these two cars were totally unfamiliar with the ads, then the ads would not be a good explanation for the difference in sales. In order for an advertisement to motivate a person, that person must experience the ad.
(A) is not necessarily helpful: if the two advertising budgets are the same, then we can't conclude anything. Furthermore, spending, say, twice as much on advertising does not necessarily mean the resultant ads will be twice as good.
(B) is irrelevant: ads don't necessarily include contact information, and such information is trivially easy to find on the web.
(D) introduces the issue of maintenance costs. If potential buyers were aware that one car cost more to maintain than the other, then that might dissuade them. This choice, though, mentions nothing about potential buyers knowing anything.
(E) is close, but technically, whether folks bought other cars knew these ads would be irrelevant to the difference in sales between these two cars. We need to know whether folks who bought these two cars knew the ads --- that's precisely what (C), the OA, says.
This is pretty obvious for an evaluation even if you are not from marketing domain. Ad firm would like to know whether their ads were effective and generated better sales results due to that effectiveness. We should choose the most direct answer, which indicates the conversion rate of the ad. That answer would be C
Posts: 26
The conclusion is One Ad firm created more effective Ad than the other? How does C help us in that? If they remember both ads then how are we evaluating the conclusion?
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