Q25 - Some advertisers offer certain consumers home computer

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Inference/Most Strongly Supported

Stimulus Breakdown:
Some companies give people free computers so they can show them ads targeted to them (based on their Internet histories). The resulting sales cover the cost of the PCs (that's right, I'm not a Mac guy).

Answer Anticipation:
Since the language in the given is weak, I'm looking for a weak answer. Other than that, I'm going to keep myself open to anything within the scope.

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Definitely leave it on the first pass ("At least some…"). A more in-depth look leads me to pick it. The givens tell us that this strategy is something the companies can afford because of the increase in sales, so it's very strongly supported that some people spend more than they would if they didn't get these PCs.

(B) Too strong. I'm out of this answer after "No advertisers", since the stimulus only mentions some.

(C) Leave on the first pass (at least some consumers). This answer goes off rails in the second half, though, since we don't know what consumers would otherwise do. Compare this to (A) - the correct answer. This answer speaks about the consumers otherwise spending little if any money; (A) speaks about them spending more money with the PC. That absolute/hypothetical vs. the relative/actual makes the difference here.

(D) Too strong. I'm out after "would not be able to" since there could be other considerations not mentioned in this stimulus.

(E) Weak, but ultimately out of scope. There is no mention of an "opt-out" option.

Takeaway/Pattern: Most Strongly Supported questions - especially ones with weak language in the stimulus - beg for a weak answer choice.

#officialexplanation

[obobob]

Hi, what do you mean by the the language in the given is weak here? I don't see any weak wording except for "some" in the first sentence.

[ohthatpatrick]

I think he's just referring to the first sentence, since it sets the stage for all the content that follows.

What we're hearing about in sentences 2, 3, and 4 is all stuff that applies to
AT LEAST ONE advertiser
dealing with
CERTAIN consumers

So we would be nervous to extrapolate from anything we hear about this one advertiser and certain consumers. From whatever we're told in sentences 2, 3, and 4, we wouldn't be careful saying anything about advertisers and consumers broadly.

Hope this helps.

[Wenjin]

I chose B and I know that the answer is too strong, but still prefer it than A.

Argument states: the advertisers can afford the offer because increased sales targeting consumers who browse internet and provided such data to the advertisers. So apply a negation, I could say that if no data provided due to no internet usage, the advertiser would not be able to afford. Correct?

As of answer A, I want to ask, what if there is a possibility that the consumers who got the free computers are just browsing the websites but not buying anything? They could just buy from a local store for other items that they never browsed, no?

[ohthatpatrick]

In reverse order, you're saying with (A),
"what if everyone who got one of these consumers never bought anything online, they just browsed and then bought items they wanted in a store"

Well, so far, we haven't contradicted (A), since it didn't say whether these consumers bought products online or in the stores. It just said that the consumers bought more than they would have otherwise from those advertisers.

If I'm using one of these computers and Old Navy is one of the advertisements I'm seeing, and this leads me to purchase more from Old Navy (online or in the store), then I qualify as one of the "at least some consumers" in (A).

To contradict (A), we would be saying that "NONE of the consumers who use these computers end up spending any extra money than they otherwise would on the advertisers that play on these computers", then it would contradict the final sentence of the stimulus.

For (B), it's close to being the answer you want.

We can't ever say a negation must be true.
For example, if we're given "If A, then B", we can't ever take that to mean "If not-A, then not-B".

However, if we're doing a "most strongly supported" question stem in LR or RC, then we are allowed to take something like "A is the reason for B" and say something like "If we didn't have A, we probably wouldn't have B".

Since the stimulus says
"the increased sales that result from targeted ads is the reason that these advertisers can afford to offer the computers for free".

So (B) would be a correct answer if it said
"If using the computers did not result in increased sales from targeted ads, then these advertisers could not afford to offer these computers for free".

But it's saying something different / broader / more extreme.

1. NO ADVERTISER, ever? We only heard about "some advertisers" involved in this special computer promotion. We can't infer anything from this about ALL ADVERTISERS.

2. "promotions that give away computers free of charge" - this language isn't specific enough to THIS particular promotion, in which consumers get a computer free of charge in exchange for tolerating continuous ads on the screen.

There could be some other promotion that gives away computers free of charge, and maybe it works by getting consumers to agree to put large decals of advertisers' logos on their cars in exchange for the computers.

Hope this helps.

[Wenjin]

Thank you Patrick! I think at the time I did this problem I missed key information in the last sentence of the argument : “INCREASED sales that result from this PRECISE TARGETING OF INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS”. This information really constrained the situation and is shown in answer choice A: at least some consumers spend more money on purchases from those advertisers....