Six months or so after getting a video recorder, many early buyers app

Question

Six months or so after getting a video recorder, many early buyers apparently lost interest in obtaining videos to watch on it. The trade of businesses selling and renting videos is still buoyant, because the number of homes with video recorders is still growing. But clearly, once the market for video recorders is saturated, businesses distributing videos face hard times.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the conclusion above?

(A) The market for video recorders would not be considered saturated until there was one in 80 percent of homes.

(B) Among the items handled by video distributors are many films specifically produced as video features.

(C) Few of the early buyers of video recorders raised any complaints about performance aspects of the new product.

(D) The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them.

(E) In a shrinking market, competition always intensifies and marginal businesses fail

VeritasPrepBrian · Accepted Answer

Really good question. This problem is a great example of why noticing precision in language - any extra adjectives, modifiers, etc. that the testmaker writes in to the problem that doesn't really have to be there - is so critical.

Look at the main premise - we're basing this conclusion that those distributing videos will have a hard time (once the market is saturated) on the fact that:

Six months after getting a video recorder,  many early buyers  apparently lost interest in obtaining videos to watch on it...

NOTE: that's a really specific group of people who lost interest. It's not "most buyers"...it's most EARLY buyers. And then we draw a big general conclusion about the whole industry based on that really specific group.

Choice (D) gives a reason for why that particular group isn't necessarily representative of the whole: if early buyers are heavily predisposed to quickly tiring of whatever new product they purchase, then we can't necessarily extrapolate their disinterest to "everyone." Early adopters aren't a great predictor of what the whole market will do.

Note that this follows a common CR argument structure called "Generalization" - when data about a small subset of the whole is used to draw a sweeping, general conclusion about the whole (e.g. "The new restaurant must not be doing well (generalization) because when I drove by it yesterday the parking lot was nearly empty (one data point).") When you suspect generalization is the case, if it's a weaken question you want to show that that data point is an outlier ("however, when I drove by it was a Tuesday afternoon, typically the least popular time for anyone to be at a restaurant"), and if it's a strengthen question you want to show that it's representative of the whole ("and that was on a Friday at 7pm, when every other restaurant in town was experiencing hour-long waits to get a table").

proccountant · Answer

D is most relevant.

The argument is that an initial group of people bought a video recorder and then grew tired of it after so many months and then stop obtaining new videos. The conclusion is that once everyone who buys this new video recorder (100% market saturation) and then tire of it will ultimately hurt the video production market.

The point of D pokes a hole in this conclusion by showing that author's test group of "initial buyers" may not have the same usage pattern with the video recorder as a "future buyer" might. In a nutshell, D states that the author  may be  comparing apples to oranges which means that the argument is not conclusive.

ichha148 · Answer

i will also go with D

Here is the reasoning :-

Conclusion :-
Once the market for video recorders is saturated ->businesses distributing videos face hard times.
Cause -> Effect

Alternate Cause -> Same Effect
D) The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them.

Its not because market is saturated , but because early buyers got tired and didnot use the product

bsv180985 · Answer

I will go with D.

The conclusion is based on the assumtion that after six months early buyers loose interest in video. But it's about early buyers, not all buyers. It's wrongly assumed that ALL buyers will be tired from videos after six month usage. The answer D states that only early buyers feel it. Thus, next buyer ("old") will keep interest more than six month, and thus business will find its market.

sasen · Answer

Premise1:  Six months or so after getting a video recorder, many early buyers apparently lost interest in obtaining videos to watch on it 
 
Premsie 2:The trade of businesses selling and renting videos is still buoyant, because the number of homes with video recorders is still growing 
 Conclusion:But clearly, once the market for video recorders is saturated, businesses distributing videos face hard times. 
 Note that the real concluion is not "businesses distributing videos face hard times" but the fact that "Market will become satuarated" and what is the premise....some early buyers have apparenty lost insterest in buying videos to watch it...
what weakens that "video makt will staurate"?
anything which shows that this losing interest beong to a specific community of buyers and not a trend in general. hence D
Though D is the answer choice because it sounds best,it is important to know why it is the best

ezhilkumarank · Answer

My answer is B. Here are the reasons.

Option A: This is introducing another condition but the conclusion clearly stated  "once the market for game consoles is saturated" . Eliminated.
Option C: Few customers have raised complaints however to weaken the claim we would have to assume that those customers would buy new products as they are launched to address their defect. Also "few" customers means few opportunities to distribute and hence the hard times mentioned in the argument would still be a reality. Eliminated.
Option D: Strengthen the claim. Eliminated.
Option E: Again strengthens the claim and hence eliminated.

smiddy1860 · Answer

I'm struggling with what the conclusion is based on the responses above. It looks like the conclusion could be the first sentence, because the writer uses the word apparently, which is his/her opinion/conclusion. If that's the case, isn't the conclusion that early buyers don't want videos to watch on their recorder. It implies that there must be something wrong with the recorder. It doesn't imply that people don't like watching videos, because the demand for players is still high. If you want to weaken this conclusion, which I think means on the contrary, wouldn't C be on the contrary. Since people still want to watch videos, they will need a player. If there aren't very many complaints, then why wouldn't people want the player that the early buyers bought.

gmat1220 · Answer

keyword "clearly" separates the conclusion from the premise.

Paraphrase - People get tired of watching the VCR after 6 months of purchase. The sales which is high now will slacken in the coming days. Clearly, the market for VCR is going to face hard times when the market is saturated.

"Weaken" means weaken the conclusion.

(D) The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them. -> this tells us that there will ALWAYS be a market for the product and hence weakens the conclusion.

jitgoel · Answer

Not very clear on your explaination. Can you please elaborate.

conty911 · Answer

Conclusion:  once the market for video recorders is saturated, businesses distributing videos face hard times. 
Premise 1) Six months or so after getting a video recorder,  many early buyers  apparently  lost interest  in obtaining videos to watch on it.
premise 2.)The trade of businesses  selling and renting videos is still  buoyant, because  the number of homes with video recorders is still growing .

Carefully observe the bolded parts.
Premise 1 talks about only early buyers losing interest and not the whole population of buyers.
premise 2 talks about that thetrade is good as the number of people (not the early buyers but others as-well) who purchase video players is growing.

Now you can easily, find the option which attacks the conclusion.

option D:The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them.
If early buyers have a habbit of buying and retiring their purchase quickly , then it will not effect the other people as stated in premise 2 "the number of homes with video recorders is still growing".
Option D segregates early buyers from rest of the buyers and hence weakens the conclusion that all people will lose interest in buying videos after saturation.

egmat · Answer

@conty911 - good explanation
 
Here is another take on the explanation:

The author makes his conclusion by generalizing the behavior of a segment of population - early buyers. The author says, that because early buyers lost interest in renting movies, so would later buyer and hence concludes that the business of renting is doomed.

While making the conclusion the author makes the  assumption  that the behavior of later buyers is the same as that of early buyers.

Choice D: In indicates that the early buyers may be different from the later buyers. Once you add this information to the conclusion the conclusion does not seem as strong (& hence weakened)

Let me know if this helps.

Rajat

pqhai · Answer

Hello.

My 2 cents for choosing D. Hope it helps!

First, this is a "weaken" question, the MOST IMPORTANT thing is finding correct conclusion and its assumptions.

ANALYZE THE QUESTION:

Premise 1: Six months or so after getting a video game console, the market becomes saturated.
Premise 2: Early buyers apparently lost interest in obtaining games to play on the gaming console.
Premise 3: The trade of business selling and renting games is still buoyant, because the number of homes with video game consoles is still growing.

Conclusion:  once the   market   for game consoles is   saturated,   businesses distributing games face   hard times  .

Assumption:    if the market has  NOT saturated  yet, customers still keep renting video game = businesses distributing game consoles do  not face hard time .

ATTACK THE CONCLUSION:
  
The author assumes that once the market for game consoles is saturated, businesses distributing game face hard times. It means if the  market has NOT saturated yet, customers still keep renting video game . Only when market is saturated, customers will be bored of renting video games and stop doing so. Nope, what if customers who rent video games are people attracted by "NEW" stuffs but will be tired of this kind of stuff very quickly. It means they will stop renting video games even when the market for game consoles still grows. Clearly, the conclusion falls apart.

OPTION D: 
 (D) The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them
D says exactly the same. Hence, it's an answer.

Hope it helps.

AdityaHongunti · Answer

VeritasPrepBrian   egmat 
My reasoning was on the similar line , the pattern of question being : part to whole.
But the reason i rejected D : 1. It does compare early with rest 2. It mostly restates the premise "early buyers loose interest."

My reasoning :
Six months or so after getting a video recorder, many early buyers apparently lost interest in obtaining videos to watch on it. The trade of businesses selling and renting videos is still buoyant, because the number of homes with video recorders is still growing. But clearly, once the market for video recorders is saturated, businesses distributing videos face hard times.

Meaning : Many early buyers lost interest in obtaining videos
BUT, trade of selling and renting is still great, why?? no. of homes with video recorders is still growing (HERE IS WHERE I STOPPED AS I FELT SOME CONTRAST. If early buyers lost interest but the no. is still growing , then this may be part to whole pattern)
Conclusion : once market gets saturated , businesses distributing Vs will face hard time.
(answer choices telling us that market wont get saturated will be irrelevant as author is talking about a condition and not whether condition will occur)

Thinking : first author tells us about early buyers and their current stance. Then a surprising data is presented which tells us that business is still thriving. Now in which situation will the business still grow EVEN IF the market gets saturated ?? classic part whole pattern : early is not representative of whole. 
additionally, the author talks about number of VIDEOPLAYERS' market getting saturated , but what if the sale or anything that may increase the sale of VIDEOS increases??? for eg: 10 ppl all have 10 Vplayers . Now according to argument once all these 10 have Vpalyers they may not buy vidoes, resulting in a hard time for video distributors. But what if the amount of videos sold or rented increases with respect to videoplayers . ?? that is what if the ratio of videos to videoplayers increases?? The conclusion may not hold

(D) The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them
-Now this tells m about early buyers but not about others. others may also be the same as early .

though i understand that an answer in GMAT is never too straightforward, but i would like you to tell me that what should one do in such a situation?? i mean did i try to be definitive?? and are we suppossed to assume that if an ans choice tells us about one group and not the other, we should assume that the group not mentioned is different?? because such thinking usually is wrong in RC, where we look for explicit comparison.

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

All great stuff,  AdityaHongunti ! A couple responses for you:

1) It's close, but (D) doesn't quite just "restate the premise" - note that the premise is specifically about early buyers of these video players. Choice (D) makes a point to broaden the scope to early buyers of any new/novel product:

The early buyers of  a novel product  are  always  people...

What that does is serve to say "yeah it's totally understandable that the early purchasers of this product will lose interest after six months...they do that with every product." And *that* really serves to say "you can't draw a conclusion about the whole market based on these early buyers, because they're always the first to get bored of a product."

2) One thing I really like about this problem is how it showcases how much of your job on Strengthen/Weaken/Assumption is often attacking the link between the major premise and the conclusion. In real-world arguments there are usually dozens of facts leading to a conclusion...in GMAT CR the structure is usually one piece of context (facts that tell you what you're talking about, but don't really lead to the conclusion), one or two premises that lead to the conclusion, and then the conclusion. Here it would be great if we got a direct comparison between early purchasers and "all other purchasers" but notice what we do get - the whole argument is based on the fact that these early users have started to lose interest in the product, signaling that once everyone else has gone through that same cycle there won't be many users left. The main premise here is "early users lost interest." What (D) does is call in to question the validity of the main piece of evidence for the conclusion: sure, they've lost interest, but they always do so you can't really use them to predict how others will feel about the product.

Structurally this is really important on a lot of problems: if an entire argument is based on one premise, and we can call the validity of that premise (eh...doesn't really apply here) into question, you don't have much of an argument left.

3) I love what you anticipated there, that the videos-per-player ratio could be in play here, too. That difference between "players" or "buyers" and "videos" is a great place to look for that subtle-but-significant difference. So if you're thinking that way you're doing really well on these. That's a great gap to anticipate...they just don't have an answer choice to match it. Which happens - if you don't see an answer that matches your logical gap, that's when you may want to go back and find another.

teaserbae · Answer

VeritasPrepBrian   egmat  
Can you please brief how did you rejected option B ?

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Yeah, good question. I'd look at this premise:

many early buyers apparently lost interest in obtaining videos to watch on it

And just say that (B) only serves to subdivide the general category of "videos to watch on it" into a smaller chunk (many films specifically produced as video features). Note that 1) we already know that the trend is that early adopters have lost interest in obtaining "videos" in general, so any subset of that ("but romantic comedy rentals are actually increasing!") doesn't supersede the overall trend. And 2) note that (B) doesn't say in any way that that subcategory of "many films specifically produced as video features" is increasing in any way! So there's no evidence in (B) that would even really suggest that there's anything trending the other way.

Tirth8569 · Answer

.Main Argument in the Passage:
 
  Observation:  After six months, many early buyers of video recorders lost interest in watching videos. 
  However:  Businesses selling and renting videos are still doing well  because  more homes are still buying video recorders. 
  Conclusion:  Once the market is saturated (everyone who wants a video recorder has one), video-distributing businesses  will face hard times  (i.e., sales will drop).  
 
What Weakens the Conclusion?
To  weaken  the conclusion, we must find an option that suggests:
 
Let’s look at the options:
 
 (A)   The market for video recorders would not be considered saturated until there was one in 80 percent of homes. 
 
 This tells us when the market will saturate but says nothing about what happens  after  saturation.
 ➡️  Does not weaken  the conclusion.  
 
 (B)   Among the items handled by video distributors are many films specifically produced as video features. 
 
 This shows video distributors have  exclusive or special content . It suggests people might  continue to buy or rent videos , even if recorder sales stop growing.
 ➡️  Yes, this weakens  the conclusion because it suggests  continued demand  for videos after saturation.  
 
 (C)   Few of the early buyers of video recorders raised any complaints about performance aspects of the new product. 
 
 Talks about product quality, not about the demand for videos after saturation.
 ➡️  Irrelevant.   
 
 (D)   The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them. 
 
 Supports the idea that early buyers lost interest. But that  supports , not weakens, the conclusion.
 ➡️  Strengthens  the conclusion.  
 
 (E)   In a shrinking market, competition always intensifies and marginal businesses fail. 
 
 Again, this  supports  the conclusion, saying businesses will fail in tough times.
 ➡️  Strengthens  the conclusion.  
 
✅ Correct Answer:  (B) 
Because it  challenges the idea  that businesses will suffer once recorder sales stop by pointing out that video distributors may have  unique content  that still attracts customers.

anushree01 · Answer

B is rather out of scope!
ps : looks like a GPTfied explanation

guddo · Answer

The argument states that early buyers of video recorders often lose interest in renting videos after about six months. Video rental businesses are currently profitable because new households keep buying recorders. The conclusion is that once the market is saturated, these businesses will face hard times.

We need to find the option that most seriously weakens the conclusion that video distributors will face hard times after saturation.

Core Assumption to Attack:
The argument assumes the behavior of early buyers (losing interest quickly) will predict the behavior of all future buyers. If later buyers are different, the conclusion fails.

(A) The market for video recorders would not be considered saturated until there was one in 80 percent of homes.

This only changes the definition of saturation. It does not address whether rental demand will persist after saturation. No weakening.

(B) Among the items handled by video distributors are many films specifically produced as video features.

This discusses supply, not demand. It does not show that customers will continue renting after saturation. No weakening.

(C) Few of the early buyers of video recorders raised any complaints about performance aspects of the new product.

Lack of complaints is irrelevant to ongoing rental demand. It does not challenge the link between early behavior and future demand. No weakening.

(D) The early buyers of a novel product are always people who are quick to acquire novelties, but also often as quick to tire of them.

This weakens the argument. It states early buyers are a specific group (novelty-seekers) whose quick loss of interest is not typical. Later buyers, who are not novelty-seekers, may continue renting steadily. This breaks the assumption that early buyer behavior predicts post-saturation demand.

(E) In a shrinking market, competition always intensifies and marginal businesses fail.

This strengthens the conclusion. It agrees that a shrinking market (which the argument predicts) leads to hard times.

Thus, option (D) weakens the argument by showing that the early buyers' behavior is not representative of all buyers, breaking the link between the observed trend and the future prediction.

Answer: (D)

Six months or so after getting a video recorder, many early buyers app

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Six months or so after getting a video recorder, many early buyers app

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