Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December

Question

Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December business, as much because  of their top line revenue of a year earlier being so weak as that  customers were gaining a new beginning on purchasing their Christmas present.

(A) of their top line revenue of a year earlier being so weak as that
(B) of their top line revenue of a year earlier having been as weak as because
(C) of their a top line revenue of the year before being as weak as because
(D) their top line revenue a year before had been so weak as because
(E) of their top line revenue of the year before were as weak as that

I could not understand a bit about this question. Verbal Experts please help

Zarrolou · Accepted Answer

Lets begin by looking at the overall structure of the sentence:

Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December business,   as much because    of their top line revenue of a year earlier being so weak as that  customers were gaining a new beginning on purchasing their Christmas present.

"as much"  is an unfinished idiom so we must complete it keeping the parallel strcuture: as much because (...) as because. Only B C D have "because" in the final part, so lets keep them.

(B) of their top line revenue of a year earlier having been as weak   as because  
(C) of their a top line revenue of the year before being as weak   as because  
(D) their top line revenue a year before had been so weak   as because

However the parallelism in B and C is flawed at the beginning: as much because   of   (...) as because. Only D has the perfect parallelism hence is the correct answer. 
Hope it's clear

swati007 · Answer

@abhinav11 : Here goes an easy explanation...As we can see from the non-underlined part the idiom "as much as " is used in the sentence.
The correct ans would contain as much X.......as Y......
 
Option A: as much because of....as that -> not parallel
B: as much because of ....as because (of is missing)customers-> not parallel
C: as much because of....as because( of is missing)customers- >not parallel
D:  as much because their  ..... as because customers  ->parallel
E: as much because of ...as that customers -> not parallel

cumulonimbus · Answer

106. Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December business, as much because of their top line revenue of a year earlier being so weak as that customers were gaining a new beginning on purchasing their Christmas present.
(A) of their top line revenue of a year earlier being so weak as that
(B) of their top line revenue of a year earlier having been as weak as because
(C) of their a top line revenue of the year before being as weak as because
 (D) their top line revenue a year before had been so weak as because – as much because X as because Y 
(E) of their top line revenue of the year before were as weak as that

rohitkumar77 · Answer

Answer D ;

i followed a rule here which i am not sure is correct or not :

because of followed by a noun is appropriate but if it is followed by a entire clause then we cant use because of ;

if someone can tell me if am following the right rule this would help me ;

also to cross check ; A and c eliminated being usage awkward ; B has which pointing to jaws and D has each of which " are""

Word like each , everyone , everything takes singular

mmagyar · Answer

Correct regarding because. Either "because of + noun" or "because clause"

While you can technically parallel "because of + noun" with "because clause", it is not preferred.

Where are you getting "jaws" and "are"? But yes, each, everyone, and everything are singular.

Side note to the question's authors: "Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December business" is probably not the correct idiom - it should probably be "from their December business" or something else. That's the downside to using non-official verbal questions.

arul612 · Answer

GMAT Pill should give an explanation....

DharLog · Answer

I am still not sure that I understand what this passage means.
Tried to follow the structure - it was not easy to.
So I chose D because of past perfect, that suits in this cas without strange "beeing", "having been" and with more clear stucture.

ap2201 · Answer

Dear Experts,

Could you pls have a look at this question, especially b/w answer options B and D.

I chose B because 1. I was convinced we don't need a past perfect tense, 2. I knew that as long as we have "as because," we were golden; we don't necessarily need the structure: as much because X as because Y and therefore "of" would lead to elimination. I applied the logic from: https://gmatclub.com/forum/in-recent-ye ... ml#p620461

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  ap2201 ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the sentence formed by Option B features the phrase "as weak as because customers were gaining", which produces an incoherent meaning.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

RonTargetTestPrep · Answer

Most importantly—I'm not seeing any real point in using this question. It's a knockoff of  this official problem from GMAC , with the functional parts copied so exactly that the imitation problem can't possibly add any learning value. Whoever "created" this problem didn't even bother to scramble the answer choices, LOL.

I don't see a citation of the source. If anyone knows the source, please post that information—if only so that we can monitor future postings from the same source, to see whether those too are just plagiarized versions of official GMAC problems.

The explanation I gave in  this post (permalinked—should jump to the post once the page has finished loading)  also applies to the problematic  OF +   + __ING  construction in choice B here.

Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December

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Merchandisers reported mild profits in their December

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