A shoe manufacturer developed a man-made material that looked and felt

Question

A shoe manufacturer developed a man-made material that looked and felt just like natural leather. Over the course of a year, the manufacturer made its entire shoe line in both natural leather and man-made leather. During the year when both lines were sold, the man-made leather shoes outsold the natural leather shoes. The shoe manufacturer concluded that its customers prefer man-made leather to natural leather.

Which of the following is assumed by the author?

A. There were not other reasons for the customers to purchase the manmade instead of the natural leather.
B. People are buying man-made leather because they prefer it, not for some other reason.
C. Customers prefer manmade leather to natural leather.
D. Customers purchases the man-made instead of the natural leather because of the cheaper price and better durability.
E. A shoe company made their full line of shoes in both natural and manmade, and the manmade outsold the real.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Accepted Answer

AbhiroopGhosh 
The distinction between A and B is definitely subtle, but it makes a big difference. As tenben pointed out above, this is a correlation/causation argument. The premise is about correlation (manmade, more sales) and the conclusion is about causation (manmade had more sales BECAUSE people prefer it). The author is assuming that there isn't some reason other than preference that drove the sales of the manmade option (price, availability, requirements, etc.). Both A and B seem to address this, but A only addresses whether reasons EXIST, not whether anyone actually made the decision on that basis. For instance, you could argue that it is better for animals if we use manmade leather, but if that isn't what's driving customer purchases, then it doesn't matter that this reason exists. On the other hand, if B is false and people are actually buying leather for other reasons, then the argument fails. That makes B a necessary assumption.

Having said that, I don't think the GMAT would present us with a choice like this, and there are many clues that this is not a professionally-written question. (If it's really from Kaplan, I'd be very surprised.) When we see these kinds of closely-related answers, usually a student wrote the question as an exercise. Also, note that the argument simply describes the manufacturer's reasoning, but then the question asks us the address the author's own conclusion, and there isn't one. So this is an interesting exercise, but shouldn't be taken to represent what a real GMAT CR would ask us to do. In fact, in the absence of B, I could imagine A or something like it appearing as a correct answer.

MayankDimri · Answer

Can someone explain in detail difference between Choice A and B?

tenben · Answer

Supereasy. (Trap is only for ppl who follow the negation blindly)
This is a Causal assumption.
Conclusion:-customers prefer man-made leather to natural leather.
Premise:- During the year when both lines were sold, the man-made leather shoes outsold the natural leather shoes.
So, let's simplify. It says more selling means more popular(preferred).
Rules
In causal assumptions there can be three implicit scenarios.
1. No other Cause except the  cause  itself causes the  Effect .
2.  Cause  happens before  Effect 
3.  Effect  does not cause the  cause .
Now coming to the question
A shoe manufacturer developed a man-made material that looked and felt just like natural leather. Over the course of a year, the manufacturer made its entire shoe line in both natural leather and man-made leather. During the year when both lines were sold, the man-made leather shoes outsold the natural leather shoes. The shoe manufacturer concluded that its customers prefer man-made leather to natural leather.

Which of the following is assumed by the author?

A. There were not other reasons for the customers to purchase the manmade instead of the natural leather. Other reason? which other reason?TOO broad.
B. People are buying man-made leather because they prefer it, not for some other reason. Exactly. No other cause other than the  cause  causes the  effect 
C. Customers prefer manmade leather to natural leather. Conclusion , nothing sort of assumption (Hence trap for blind negators)
D. Customers purchases the man-made instead of the natural leather because of the cheaper price and better durability. This shows other causes. Reject them straightaway
E. A shoe company made their full line of shoes in both natural and manmade, and the manmade outsold the real. We are not intrested in other shoe company or their customers. (out of scope).

Learn verbal with Karan.

gmatophobia · Answer

Hello Experts,

Can you please help me understand the difference between option A and option B ?

Thanks in advance.

IanStewart · Answer

I'm not disagreeing with Dmitry -- if we're trying to guess the question writer's rationale for the right answer, he's surely right, because there's no other reasonable explanation -- but I think we have to read answer A in a very unnatural way (a way you'd never read a similar answer on the GMAT) to conclude it's wrong. If someone says "Orange juice tastes better than apple juice, but I have other reasons to buy apple juice instead of orange juice", the person is usually saying they actually buy apple juice. They're definitely at least saying that those other reasons matter. So when we read answer A here, it would just be bizarre to think the "other reasons" answer A mentions are completely inconsequential. The author says people bought more man-made leather, therefore they prefer man-made leather. The author is assuming there weren't other reasons (cost, animal protection, etc) a customer might buy more man-made leather. Answer A is a perfectly good answer here, and to my reading, it means almost exactly the same thing as B, which is also a good answer here. So there are two right answers, and it's just not a good question.

I also always find these prep company questions that hinge on fine linguistic distinctions unfair, because if we're meant to choose an answer because of some subtle shade of meaning, we need to be confident that the question's author has the command of language to convey fine shades of meaning. And here, answer D for example is just badly written ("purchases" should be "purchase", though that might be a typo, but none of the three "the" words should be there -- the first two should just be cut and the last should be "its" -- and the comparatives "cheaper" and "better" could be cut without any loss of meaning), so I'd never think, reading this question, that I should attend to very subtle distinctions in meaning when the question doesn't get the not-at-all-subtle distinctions right. Unless prep companies have Toni Morrison or William Faulkner on staff, they shouldn't be trying to write questions like this, because they'll never work.

sset92 · Answer

Although I got this one wrong, I see the difference now between A and B.

If we negate A, we get something like - "There  were  other reasons for the customers to purchase the manmade instead of the natural leather" BUT  "preference"  along with those other reasons could still be one of the reasons.

If we negate B, we get something like - "People are buying man-made leather NOT because they prefer it, BUT for some other reason." So this very clearly removes without any doubt preference as a reason for them to buy more of Man Made leather.

tanishqgirotra · Answer

If we negate B, this would make it the statement that the people are buying the mm leather shoes for some other reason, lets says durability or price, so, in that case also they are preferring it over the real ones, be it whatever is the reason for preferring. So in that case this assumption would in my opinion be not right.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

tanishqgirotra

There's a difference between purchasing a particular pair of shoes and preferring the *material* those shoes are made of. If I just purchase the cheapest ones, for instance, I might still *prefer* the material the other ones are made of; I just don't want to pay for it! This is exactly the gap B addresses--the difference between choosing to purchase something and choosing it BECAUSE OF the material it's made of, as opposed to some other reason.

Also, notice that in the end the negation has to mean that they DO NOT prefer the manmade leather. We can't say "It's not because they prefer it, but that still means they prefer it"!!

BinodBhai · Answer

Option B is more precise because it directly addresses the manufacturer's conclusion. The manufacturer concludes that customers prefer the man-made leather. Therefore, the core assumption is that the reason for the higher sales (the premise) is this preference. It explicitly links the customer's buying behavior to their personal liking of the product, thereby directly supporting the conclusion.

Option A is a broader, but less specific statement. While it correctly points out that other reasons are being ignored, it doesn't explicitly state what the *assumed* reason for the purchase is. It's an accurate description of the logical flaw in the argument (ignoring other variables), but it's not the precise assumption that the author of the argument is making. The author's assumption isn't just that there are no other reasons; it's specifically that "preference" is the reason.

In a logical reasoning question like this, the correct answer is the one that most directly and accurately states the unstated premise required to make the conclusion follow from the evidence. The conclusion is about "preference," so the assumption must also be about "preference."

A shoe manufacturer developed a man-made material that looked and felt

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A shoe manufacturer developed a man-made material that looked and felt

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