Q12 - Our company's mail-order

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Our change to offer unlimited free shipping probably caused mail-order sales to go up.
Evidence: Mail-order sales went up 25% around the same time that we started offering unlimited free shipping.

Answer Anticipation:
There are a lot of LSAT arguments like this: "Highway fatalities went down right around the same time we lowered the speed limit. Thus the policy change must be responsible."

Whenever LSAT authors conclude some causal interpretation of things, we have a two-pronged thought process:
1. What are OTHER posible ways to explain the background data [the premise]
2. How Plausible is the AUTHOR'S WAY of explaining? [the conclusion]

So I would approach these answers thinking that the correct answer will either
1. Rule out a DIFFERENT WAY of explaining the [25% increase in mail-order sales]
or
2. Increase the plausibility that [offering unlimited free shipping] made a difference.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Yes! It increases the plausibility that "unlimited free shipping" is causing sales to go up if companies that DON'T have it are seeing their sales go DOWN

(B) Weakens. It decreases the plausibility that unlimited free shipping caused the sales increase if customers might not have even been aware of the change.

(C) Out of scope: We don't care about 'profits'. We're only concerned with what caused the 25% increase in mail-order sales.

(D) Weakens (slightly). It's less likely that "unlimited free shipping" is a causal difference-maker if the company's competitors already offer it.

(E) Strengthen (slightly). This is the inverse of (D). It lets us know that by offering unlimited free shipping, this company is in the minority. i.e. It makes it more plausible that offering unlimited free shipping could be a causal difference-maker if most companies don't offer it. But this isn't NEARLY as powerful an idea as (A), which seems to show that sales is covarying with unlimted free shipping.

Takeaway/Pattern: The most common way to Increase Plausibility of the author's causal story is some form of this "Control Group / Covariation" answer: you show more evidence of cause and effect appearing or disappearing in tandem. "No cause, no effect" or "less cause, less effect" or their opposites are all powerful ways to increase the plausibility that two things are causally connected.

#officialexplanation

[Michaeldavis2p2]

While (A) Is an obviously good answer here, I don't understand why (E) is wrong. If the company is now offering something that most other companies don't offer, it would distinguish the company and could be a plausible reason why, in fact, the unlimited free shipping offered by this company but not by most others would result in an increase in sales.

Thank you for any help provided.

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm sympathetic to your sentiment about (E). The problem, I think, is that (E) doesn't have any connection to sales.

It could be true that most companies are currently experiencing an increase in sales. If that's the case, then it doesn't seem like a friendlier shipping policy has anything to do with the sales uptick.

In order for us to make (E) strengthen, we have to assume that possessing a characteristic that the majority of your competitors do not possess is a sales advantage.

I don't think that qualifies as a common sense assumption, though. While possessing a characteristic that sets you apart from competitors CAN be an asset, it could also be a detriment.

(For example, MOST lemonade stands don't put vinegar in their lemonade, but my decision to do so did not help sales at my lemonade stand).

In this case, our outside knowledge tells us that "unlimited free shipping" is a good distinction, not a bad one. But the idea that a distinction is generally a good thing is a bit of an extraneous assumption.

I think it's easier to see why (E) isn't correct when you think about what LSAT really wants us to address with causal arguments:
i. are there alternative explanations for the observed phenomenon (could there be some other reason why sales recently increased BESIDES the change in shipping policy? Maybe it's just November and sales are picking up as people place holiday orders)
ii. is there evidence that the supposed cause (unlimited free shipping) and the supposed effect (sales increase) go hand in hand? i.e., when the supposed cause is absent, is the supposed effect also absent?

When I see a causal argument, which is about half of Strengthen/Weaken questions, I'm looking for the answer to address alternative explanations or provide more evidence about the correlation between alleged cause and observed effect.

And (A) does the latter. It's basically the "control group" in this scientific experiment. If you wanted to test whether unlimited free shipping was the meaningful variable causing sales increases, you would have a "control group" that still had the old shipping policy and measure the change (or lack thereof) in its sales.

Hope this helps.

[timmydoeslsat]

I was reviewing this section today and wanted to make one point in this discussion. With answer choice E, we are missing the idea of how well these other companies are doing. We would need to know that they are not doing as well as this given company.

[shirando21]

why is c incorrect?

[ohthatpatrick]

The conclusion we're trying to strengthen is
"the change to offer free shipping caused the increase in sales"

Is the author trying to convince us that sales went up? No, that's the first sentence, and we'll accept that premise as fact.

He's trying to convince us of the reason why sales went up: he believes it is due to the new shipping policy.

Someone arguing with this author would argue that something else is causing the sales to increase, not the new shipping policy.

So the debate is over what is the cause of the rising sales.

A correct answer would make us more convinced that free shipping is the reason for the increased sales.

(C) doesn't say anything about free shipping or any other potential cause of increased sales, so it's irrelevant to the debate. (C) brings up rising profits ... we would think, "Great, but WHY are profits rising? This answer doesn't tell us anything about any potential cause of the increased sales/profits."

Hope this helps.

[sumukh09]

I thought C did touch upon a potential cause of the increase in profits since it explicitly mentioned "since the change in policy." If it only said "the company's profits have increased" then I think you could make the argument that there's no potential cause or reason for the increase in profits which is why it's incorrect. I think C is incorrect for another reason, moreover that it's a premise booster - the argument mentions that sales have increased since the change in policy and profits are tied to sales, so saying profits have increased as well merely restates a part of the argument. What do the experts think?

[ilia.medovikov]

[quote="sumukh09"]I thought C did touch upon a potential cause of the increase in profits since it explicitly mentioned "since the change in policy." If it only said "the company's profits have increased" then I think you could make the argument that there's no potential cause or reason for the increase in profits which is why it's incorrect. I think C is incorrect for another reason, moreover that it's a premise booster - the argument mentions that sales have increased since the change in policy and profits are tied to sales, so saying profits have increased as well merely restates a part of the argument. What do the experts think?
Hello sumukh09,

I am by no means an LSAT expert, but I agree with your comment that (c) did touch upon the cause for sales increase. Namely, one way to strengthen a causal conclusion is affirm that when cause occurs, the effect occurs as well. (C) seems to touch upon this idea. It affirms the occurrence of the the cause by stating that change in policy took place. However, (c) does not seem to affirm the occurrence of the effect since it does not state that there was increase in sales. Rather, (c) states that there was an increase in profits. Intuitively, it seems reasonable to assume that increase in profit occurred due to sales increase, but this assumption is not necessarily valid. Perhaps, increase in profits took place due to reduction in prices charged by the company's suppliers. Had conclusion of the argument stated that "change in policy caused increase in profits from mail-order sales " (c) would have been correct because it would have affirmed the causal relationship.

[griffin.811]

Be careful with sales and profits. Increased profits doesn't equal increased sales. Perhaps sales remained flat, and the new policy just reduced expenses, which would also result in increased profits.

Since c could both stregnthen' and weaken A is the safer bet.

I think Patrick was right on with the control group line of thinking. Def storing that in the back of my mind.

[cvoldstad]

I am confused as to why B would not work as an answer.

We are looking to strengthen the causal link, Mail order sales have increased since change thus change caused the increase...

I saw B as strengthening by eliminating another possible explanation for the increase-- perhaps sales increased because the company started widely advertising this change and reaching consumers it had not before??

[ttunden]

I am confused as to why B would not work as an answer.

We are looking to strengthen the causal link, Mail order sales have increased since change thus change caused the increase...

I saw B as strengthening by eliminating another possible explanation for the increase-- perhaps sales increased because the company started widely advertising this change and reaching consumers it had not before??

B doesn't strengthen the causal relationship that is posited in the conclusion.

Who cares if they did not widely advertise the change in policy. This doesn't have to occur. We're looking for something that would strengthen the causal relationship.

The ways to strengthen a casual relationship are:
no cause no effect (which is what A does)
Cause and effect( usually in another situation or similar situation)
Eliminate alternative explanations
Eliminate reversal of cause and effect.

[cvoldstad]

Increased advertising would be an alternative explanation. Ie it was not the fact of the policy change that led to the increase but rather that more customers became aware of the company due to the advertising that happened to coincide with the policy

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, I see your line of thinking with (B).

Unfortunately, when I saw (B), I saw it as almost weakening the argument.

Apparently, (B) doesn't have a strong enough common sense connection to work one way or the other.

When an author tells me that X caused Y, I have two options for strengthening/weakening the argument:

- addressing the plausibility of HIS causal story

- considering alternative causal stories

Generally, I expect the correct answer to consider alternative causal stories because most Weaken questions would do that and about half of Strengthen questions would (when causality is being tested).

But let's think about addressing the plausibility of the MANAGER'S causal story.

In order for me to believe that a new shipping policy giving free shipping on orders under $50 led to an increase in sales, I need a few things to be true:
- people had to be aware that the free shipping policy existed. If they didn't know about it, then there's no way the shipping policy made any difference in their shopping decisions and thus the policy can't be given credit as the cause.

- people had to buy at least some items under $50. If no one bought anything under $50 from this company, then there's no way that free shipping on under $50 items made a difference.

- people had to have some alternative to purchasing their item under $50 ... either to not buy the item at all or to buy it elsewhere ... if they had no alternative (they HAD to purchase their item), then the shipping policy made no difference to their decision making.

So when I read (B), I think it's going AGAINST the first assumption I just listed. People need to be aware of the policy in order for it to have made any difference. Had the company not publicized the policy, it would be hard for people to be aware of the change.

You were saying that "widely advertising the new policy" is an alternative explanation to "the new policy". I don't think that's fair.

If the company had launched some broad advertising campaign that didn't mention the shipping policy, we could definitely say that the CAMPAIGN boosted sales, not the free shipping policy change.

But if the campaign IS focused on the free shipping policy change, then anything resulting from the campaign WOULD be considered a result of the free shipping policy change.

=== other answers ===

(C) We already know that the sales increase we're trying to explain started around when the change in policy happened ("this increase started around the time we started offering unlimited free shipping"), so this only tells us that profits also went up. That doesn't get to the underlying cause at all.

(D) This almost seems to weaken the way that (E) almost seems to strengthen. If other competing companies were already offering unlimited free shipping, then why would OUR late switch to the same policy cause a sales spike? We'd have to assume that there is something ELSE about our company customers prefer and only the free shipping was keeping them from using us before (but that's an extraneous assumption).

[pewals13]

Just distilling some thoughts already covered:

Any time you see a correlation alarm bells should go off and you want to ask the following questions;

1. Could the relationship be reversed?
2. Could there be an independent cause?
3. Could it be a coincidence?

Here you are asked to strengthen the relationship and the most common ways to do so are:

-Instance of asserted cause with asserted affect
-Instance of no cause and no effect
-Elimination of alternative cause
-Strengthening of statistical data

I think going into the answer choices and knowing this tendency allows you to view (A) as your likely pick and take a very suspicious attitude towards the rest of the choices

The Answer Choices:

(A) This is an instance of no cause with no effect

(B) If the change wasn't widely advertised how would enough people have known about it to boost sales? On strengthen/weaken answers I think it can be helpful to view answers from the least persuasive angle. Also, if an answer choice both strengthens and weakens, it is wrong.

(C) Profits are irrelevant, the logic only deals with the cause of the increase in sales.

(D) If many other competitors already offer the same service, why would consumers choose this particular company because they offer it as well? This seems to weaken.

(E) If this seems appealing it's probably because you're assuming these other companies didn't see an increase in sales. Look at this answer choice from its least persuasive angle: Imagine that all these companies that offered free shipping only on $50 and up purchases also saw a 25% increase in sales, this would provide an instance of an effect without the cause which always weakens. If an answer could strengthen or weaken depending on how you look at it, it is wrong.