#12 - Manager: Our company’s mail-order sales have recently

[ericau02]

Hi i am a bit confused you said for ac C that the policy does not mean increased sales, but isnt that the causal relationship in the stimulus. That the change in policy led to increased sales, isn't this what we are strengthening.

[Brook Miscoski]

erica,

I assume "you" means the original post. The original post does not state that the policy didn't increase sales. The original post states that profits aren't the same as sales. Thus, answer choice (C) fails to establish anything about the increase of sales, since (C) only concerns an increase in profits.

[whardy21]

I chose C. I looked at the explanation and it makes sense. However, I don't see how A strengthens the con conclusion. The conclusion says the change in policy caused the increase. In my opinion, answer choice A does not address the increase for the company. A is talking about other companies rather than its own. Please explain.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Whardy!

Here, we're dealing with a Strengthen question for a stimulus that involves cause & effect reasoning. The conclusion is that the change in shipping policy caused the increase in sales.

Cause: unlimited free shipping
Effect: increase in mail-order sales

When we are trying to strengthen causal arguments like this one, we're trying to strengthen the relationship between that cause and effect. Sometimes we can simply do that by showing that when you have the cause, you also have the effect, or that when you don't have the cause, you don't have the effect.

Answer choice (A) is talking about other companies but it's using them as a comparison to our current company. These other companies that also do mail-order sales (like the company in the stimulus) but do not have the stated cause (unlimited free shipping) also do not have the stated effect (increase in mail-order sales).

Remember that in a Strengthen question, we're just trying to help out our argument, not prove it 100%. By comparing our company to other companies that are doing things differently (not offering unlimited free shipping) and not experiencing the same result (mail-order sales decreasing rather than increasing), that strengthens the argument that it's the unlimited free shipping causing the different result in mail-order sales for this specific company.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[cornflakes]

Hi,

Answer A made sense to me here - no cause, no effect.

I wanted to ask a hypothetical question about answer D that came to me when reading the admin's rationale. Answer D states: "the company's change in policy occurred well after its competitors started offering unlimited free shipping."

The rationale stated says "If the company started offering free shipping after its competitors did, this suggests that the company was under pressure to compete. However, what caused the change in policy is an irrelevant consideration; the question is whether the sales increase resulted from it."

What I'm wondering here is, if this were say a weaken question, would answer D be sufficient to establish an alternate cause for the original cause (the unlimited shipping policy itself) and the subsequent effect of the increase in mail in revenue from orders? Does simply stating that the policy change occurred well after competitors started offering it give us enough certainty to deduce or reasonably infer that they actually changed their policy due to pressure to compete with those very competitors? To me, temporal details concerning the timing of when the policy was introduced relative to when the same policy was introduced by competitors is not sufficient grounds for establishing causal connection (and one that would be needed to sufficiently provide an alternate cause for the original cause and effect to ultimately weaken the argument). In fact, temporal details are explicitly listed as a common error of causal reasoning arguments, in that we can't establish a causal relationship between two elements simply on the basis that one event happened before the other.

To try to argue the other side of it, that this answer would provide a sufficient grounds for weakening, I can only think of two possible ways. One being that the answer goes beyond just temporal details in that it brings in a higher probability of an alternative cause. All other things equal, if we compare two scenarios side by side - scenario A we just know that the company changed its shipping policy and the revenue from mail orders increased. For scenario B, we know that the company made the change well after other companies did the same - outside of the temporal details, what B could tell us is that there is a higher likelihood that the company's change in policy was not internally developed but actually a response to something happening in the broader market. To remove the temporal element from the issue entirely, we could say that answer D assumed that the company projected other companies to change their shipping policies in the future, so they changed their own - it would maintain the latter idea while removing the temporal element. This idea of probability is the second aspect of how I would argue it from the pro weakening side - that we don't need a certainty of a causal relationship the original causal argument - we just need the possibility of one.

The underlying irony here, however, is that we would be trying to weaken the original causal argument by showing that it is not certain, but relying on the crutch of another causal premise (the alternative cause) that is also uncertain. Essentially saying that an element that weakens one thing in one case but can be relied upon to support the same thing it is trying to weaken. I hope this makes sense.

Any comments on this hypothetical would be appreciated just to see if my string of thought is rational.

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey Cornflakes,

D would not be a correct answer choice for a weaken question.

Answer choice D is implying their reasoning for instituting the change in policy to offer free-shipping is because their competitors offered the change. This is irrelevant to the outcome of whether or not the change in policy then led to an increase in sales. So this answer choice neither strengthens or weakens the conclusion.

Your hypothetical should have been more focused on: does the answer choice weaken the fact that the policy led to an increase in sales. We do not care about what caused the policy. So all of your hypotheticals into what caused the policy is irrelevant. We do not care about their intention of the policy, we only care about whether or not the policy led to an increase in sales.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Ryan

[cornflakes]

Hi Ryan,

I appreciate the response. Upon second read, I think this is actually a really good scenario for fully understanding and testing the idea of alternate cause that produces the original cause and the effect.

In the LR bible, providing a 3rd cause that produces the original cause and effect is described as an effective means for weakening a causal argument. In this case, and from your description, D tells us that the company's competitors' policies actually cause their policy to change. The argument then can be diagrammed like so:

D: Competitor Policy Change ---> Our Company Policy Change ----> Increase in Sales

Original: Our Company Policy Change ----> Increase in Sales

So it does appear that D introduces a new cause that produces the original cause. I suppose the million dollar question now is, do we need D to explicitly state that the competitor policy change causes BOTH our policy change and the increase in sales in order to weaken the original argument? Or is it simply enough to show that a different cause produces the original cause, without mentioning the effect that original cause produces? I can definitely understand if it is the first rationale here, which jives with your understanding of the question. Theoretically, all matter that exists that could be a cause for something, had to have been created or brought about by something else. So simply showing that something else brought about that thing, without establishing connection to the thing it causes, may not help us. Alternatively, if we do explicitly state that the alternate cause produces BOTH the original cause and the effect, then we have directly linked the original cause and effect to something else, weakening the likelihood that those two items are connected at all.

This problem also gets more complicated with the word "probably" - but since D proposes a cause that brings about the original cause, I think it would be usable, whereas if it proposed a cause for the effect, well then we wouldn't be able to use it.

Let me know if this makes sense/if I'm on the right track.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

If I understand your question, cornflakes, you want to know if finding a cause for the cause is a version of finding an alternate cause for the effect. If so, the answer is no, because what caused the cause is not relevant to what caused the effect.

If I claim my headache prevented me from sleeping well, it does nothing to weaken the argument to say that my headache was caused by a virus, or by an injury, or by stress, etc., because in all those cases it is still the headache that caused the lack of sleep. To weaken that claim we have to look more directly at the effect and what caused it: maybe my lack of sleep was caused by stress and not by the headache (they could both have been effects of an alternate cause). Maybe my lack of sleep was due to noisy neighbors. Etc.

Finding a something further back in the causal chain that indirectly contributed to the purported effect only by contributing to the purported cause does nothing at all to the argument.

[Agri3300]

Answer choice D is a better answer choice than A, and should be the correct answer choice. D implies that the company’s policy change was the sine qua non of their 25% increase in mail-order sales. Other things being equal, competing firms offering unlimited free shipping would have captured a portion of the market that firms not offering unlimited free shipping would have either lost or never had. If we take the factual matter of answer choice D at face value, the firm in the stimulus would have been in an economic state of lost sales and/or competitive disadvantage prior to the implementation of their free shipping policy change. That is, competing firms offering unlimited free shipping would have been able to capture mail-order sales that the firm in the stimulus was either unable to hold or capture due to its failure to offer unlimited free shipping. So when this firm changed its policy and began to offer unlimited free shipping, it adapted to the extant market conditions and made itself competitive. In this way the firm would have been able to capture or recapture mail-order sales it either previously lost or never had, and the 25% increase in sales is representative of this capture or recapture of mail-order sales resulting from the policy change.

The factual matter of answer choice A is literally implied by that of answer choice D. Mail order sales would have been decreasing for firms not offering unlimited free shipping in either factual scenario, Answer choice A only accounts specifically for firms that LOST mail-order sales to firms offering unlimited free shipping, but choice A implies absolutely nothing about the entry into the market of new firms offering unlimited free shipping from their inception. Such firms would not have lost mail-order sales they never had: they can only capture sales from firms that don’t offer unlimited free shipping. The possibility of the effect of these new firms falls within the factual matter of answer choice D; a decrease of mail-order sales for companies that don’t offer unlimited free shipping can be reasonably inferred from the factual matter of answer choice D, which states indirectly that competitors were offering unlimited free shipping WELL BEFORE the firm in the question stimulus. It’s supply and demand folks. The cost incidence of shipping goods is borne by the buyer, seller, shipper, or some combination of the three. The cost cannot be eliminated, it can only be reduced and/or shifted to some degree from one party to another. If a firm’s implementation of unlimited free shipping coincides with a 25% increase in its sales, there can be literally no other explanation for its increased sales other than the firm had a sufficient supply of goods to meet a concurrent increase in demand. The cause of the increase in sales was an increase in demand for the goods sold - period. What caused the increase in demand for the firm’s goods? Well, we know the change in the firm’s shipping policy coincided with increased sales. If the change in its shipping policy did not reduce the prices of the firm’s goods (thus meeting extant demand), then the firm’s sales increased because it was able to meet extant demand precisely at the time the firm began to offer unlimited free shipping; this implies that the firm’s competitors, regardless of whether they were offering unlimited free shipping or not, had been unable or unwilling to supply goods to the market due to (1) scarcity of supply (which would have driven up the prices of their goods), (2) lack of demand for the goods they were supplying (which occurs as a result of the market’s inability or unwillingness to purchase their goods at the prices they are asking), or both (1) and (2). Whatever the case may be, other things being equal, the firm in the question stimulus simply would not have increased its sales by 25% but for its decision to offer unlimited free shipping. Even if the firm had wrapped its entire shipping cost into the price of its goods and thus passed the entire cost of shipping onto the consumer, the firm’s increased sales could have been caused by the resultant changes in the asking prices of its goods or perhaps by a beneficial shift in the market’s perception of the firm itself due to the firm’s decision to offer unlimited free shipping to its customers, or perhaps all of the above. My point is, the precise cause or causes of the 25% increase in the firm’s sales is not more clear or more precisely deductible under the matter introduced by answer choice A than it is under the matter introduced by answer choice D, however the firm’s decision to provide unlimited free shipping does appear to be the sine qua non of the firm’s increased sales under both answer choices.

[Agri3300]

“The factual matter of answer choice A is literally implied by that of answer choice D.“

Correction: The factual matter of answer choice A is not inconsistent or incompatible with that of answer choice D.

The specific factual matter of answer choice A offers no greater insight into the cause(s) of the firm’s 25% increase in sales. It merely states that firms that didn’t offer unlimited free shipping have been losing sales. It doesn’t say how or why these firms have been losing sales, nor does it establish or indicate a nexus between unlimited free shipping and increasing or decreasing sales. Firms that do not offer unlimited free shipping can be extremely competitive—providing superior products, prices and customer service—and still lose sales to their competitors for reasons relating to reputation or the extent to which such firms are known by and accessible to their markets. Again, answer choice A does not appear to be a better answer choice than D.