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Interesting question, bpolley0. I'm happy to retort.

So, before I go into any sort of defense, I'd like you to look at the kind of things you're attacking D for, alongside the way you're supporting E.

When you attack D by saying things like "well, just because there's a trend doesn't mean it's affecting this store", you're essentially saying that D wouldn't PROVE a resolution, for 100% absolute sure. And you're right.

But then you turn right around and say, for E, "let's say that the milk is advertised for a penny" - but you don't KNOW it's being advertized for a penny!! You're making that up! Can't I just do what you did on D and say "well, just because you COULD advertize for a penny doesn't mean you WILL - maybe they advertized it and it was more expensive! Then it wouldn't resolve the discrepancy at all!"

What's good for the goose is good for the gander - you can't kill off D because it's not an ironclad guarantee and then support E for merely being an explanation in one possible scenario...

So how do you sort them out? First, it's important to realize that we don't need a 100% guarantee of resolution - we just need something that seems like a pretty reasonable, even likely culprit for the difference. If supermarkets throughout the entire nation have experienced a decline in yogurt sales, there's a pretty darn good likelihood that LargeCo is experiencing it too - we have no indication that LargeCo is somehow immune to general supermarket trends, and it's a big chain, not some random mom&pop that might be able to sit out the trend. It's not a promise, but it's pretty likely that LargeCo is experiencing a general yogurt sales hit.

Now, for E, starting up an advertising campaign has absolutely zero connection to how expensive it is. Sure, it's possible that we're advertising something as cheaper, but it's just as possible that we're advertising something that just so happens to be more expensive (not that that would be what the ad focused on, but still). Neither scenario is more likely than the other, without additional information, so I can't just pick one. I have no idea how they relate. This can only explain the discrepancy if I arbitrarily decide that LargeCo milk is in fact cheaper than the alternatives. (Notice that in D, it's not arbitrary to think that LargeCo is probably experiencing the general trend - that's pretty darn likely.)

You can also break this situation down more specifically from the beginning, by being more precise about what the weird situation is. We have two things:

• 1) ads have more influence on yogurt-buying than they do on milk-buying
  AND YET
  2) we started ads for both, and milk sales have increased more than yogurt sales

Except, that's not really very precise. Influence on what exactly? How often people buy? The quantity in general? No, which brands they buy, when they do buy. Hm, so #1 isn't saying that ads have the power to make people buy that WEREN'T going to buy, it's just the power to drag people from one brand to another. AH HA - this is about MARKET SHARE. And #1 isn't about market share, that's about absolute sales increases....!!!

Okay, reframe the weirdness:

• 1) ads have more influence on yogurt brand MARKET SHARE than they do on milk brand MARKET SHARE
  AND YET
  2) we started ads for both, and milk SALES have increased more than yogurt SALES

How can we do something that's totally supposed to increase our MARKET SHARE of yogurt, and then have very little increase in sales? If the whole pie has gotten way way smaller, then even if we are taking up a much larger slice of it, our absolute sales numbers might have barely moved. Maybe the ads are working perfectly, and all the people who are still buying yogurt are FLOCKING to our brand - it's just that there aren't as many yogurt buyers anymore.

What do you think?

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"Supermarkets throughout the entire nation..." = ALL supermarkets, including LargeCo chain supermarkets.

It's a good example of the test writers intentionally using a less obvious paraphrase to convey a simple idea in a way that's easily susceptible to misinterpretation since you have to process the phrase in full context to realize Supermarkets in plural, 'throughout', plus 'entire' makes it mean ALL. Many of the difficult/highly missed LR questions are designed to be tricky partly due to tricky grammar the test writers specifically use to test RC/grammar skills along with the logic.

(D) means that less yogurt is being purchased by consumers at supermarkets everywhere in the country for some reason, meaning the total overall volume of yogurt sales nationwide (the total/whole pie of all yogurt sales from all brands combined) has shrunk in size. Since a premise in the stimulus is about ads affecting consumers 'preferences regarding brands', it's not saying the ads cause people to buy yogurt when they wouldn't have otherwise, it's only saying that the ads influence which brand of yogurt from the pool of yogurt brands available for sale people that are already going to buy yogurt decide to buy when they're standing there in the aisle staring at the shelves in the supermarket deciding which one to put in their cart.

This explains why LargeCo's yogurt sales went up, but not as much as they should have compared to store brand milk sales increase rate because it ties together the premise that the ads do help gain market share within the pool (brand preference) and that yogurt sales did go up at LargeCo but not as much as expected, because the pool of total yogurt purchases went down. So even though they got a larger % of the yogurt purchases with their store brand than before the ads, it wasn't as big as a volume increase as milk increase because the yogurt sales volume pool got smaller. The store brand got a bigger % and bigger amount of yogurt purchases due to the ads but it wasn't as much in volume as expected because the volume of total yogurt purchases went down everywhere (like maybe because people got sick of it and the yogurt fad fizzled out whereas milk is traditionally a daily staple diet item for most/many/lots of people).

The milk sales rise is already explained by the premise that ads have a causal relationship on brand preference with both milk and yogurt ('greater influence') plus the premise that the stores had just started running the ads, so the discrepancy you are being asked to help resolve is why didn't the store brand yogurt sales go up more than store brand milk sales given that our premises say it should have?, not why the milk sales went up since that's already established by the stimulus. Store brand milk sales increased due to the ads.

With (E), your argument about the second half helping explain why milk sales increased is reasonable, but to bad that's already explained by the stimulus and therefore not what the stem is asking you to explain. (E) not only fails to explain the lackluster yogurt sales (that should have increased more than milk sales according to the first premise) even though they ran ads that cause more yogurt shoppers to pick the store brand, it perpetuates the discrepancy/paradox and further begs the question of Why then did the yogurt sales not go up as much as they should have in comparison to milk sales given not only the ads, but also (E)'s premise telling us consumers are more likely to buy the store brand. Those two premises put together just make the discrepancy even more apparent and in further need of an explanation.

This make sense?

This question was obviously designed to heavily test critical reading skills under heavy pressure with pitfalls included to trap you if reading too fast/rushing cuz it's #22 given the important but easily overlooked/misinterpreted distinctions involved in the details and with the grammar/phrasing used.

I find this question interesting since Yogurt sales are currently booming and the big yogurt fad in America only started in the last year or two but they wrote a question about the fad suddenly ending. I guess one of the test writers is probably getting sick of yogurt and/or tired of all the TV commercials for different brands or something! lol

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You're doing some good analysis, but you're missing something really critical about the nature of the answer choices (and your task). This is all about connection and likelihoods, which is an issue that crops up on difficult Strengthen/Weaken questions all the time.

I'll grant you your point that "throughout" does not absolutely guarantee that every single store/brand is affected - while that's a perfectly reasonable interpretation, it's actually not critical to understanding this situation. So, if we agree that both answer choices require an assumption in order to make them IRONCLAD resolutions, let's identify what those assumptions are:

(D) - if LargeCo (and it's brand) *are* affected by this trend, then that could easily explain where the difference is coming from.

(E) - if LargeCo's milk is now suddenly cheaper than everyone else's, and the new cheaper-ness coincided roughly with the advertising campaign, that could easily explain why milk sales soared in comparison.

So, they both pretty freaking awesome resolutions, if the assumption required is there. Next step would be to consider how likely that assumption is to be correct.

(E) - I have no earthly idea whether LargeCo's milk is cheaper than everyone else's. The fact that they are now advertising it doesn't tell me jack about how expensive it is - it's not AT ALL irrational to advertise something that's more expensive. (In fact, I would say that a massive proportion of the advertising that's out there in real life is for things that are clearly NOT the cheapest: luxury car ads, beer ads for anything other than PBR, ads for Apple products, etc.) So, I have absolutely no way of determining how likely it is that LargeCo's milk is cheaper. If I knew that, it would be cool, but I just don't. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, no way to tell which is more likely.

(Sidenote: even if we knew it was cheaper, we'd really need that cheapness to be NEW - if it had been cheaper all along, then presumably people would have been buying it *all along*, but we were told the sales *increased*. You don't NEED to go this far, but it's just more damage.)

(D) - If there's a heavy trend *throughout* the nation, it's pretty darn likely that LargeCo is affected. It's a big chain, and this trend is expansive and nationwide. I can't 100% guarantee that the trend is affecting them, but it's very very likely that it is.

So, since it's a great deal MORE likely that the trend affects LargeCo than that it doesn't, it's more likely this pie-shrinking issue is relevant than that it isn't. And if it is - we have a great resolution! But I can't say it's more likely that LargeCo's milk is cheaper than that it's more expensive - I have absolutely no idea which is more likely there.

An awesome outcome is useless if you have ZERO information about how likely that awesome outcome is. If a great outcome is more likely than not, however, that's really useful. (E) only resolves the issue in a very narrow set of circumstances, and we have no information about how likely those circumstances are.

Thoughts?