#25 - Direct-mail advertising usually consists of

[James Finch]

Hi Howard,

Correct Strengthen answer choices can run the gamut from being to fully justify the argument (essentially being sufficient assumptions) to necessary assumptions to an additional premise that makes the conclusion only slightly more likely. The argument here relies upon an assumption that the added pollutants from driving to buy products were there no direct mail advertising would at least offset the pollution caused by direct mailing, based on another assumption that the people buying products online or by phone because of direct mailings would go out and buy the product at the store otherwise. This logical gap is thus the one we should be looking to fill. We don't know how much of it will be filled, but the correct answer choice will do so to at least some degree.

Answer choice (B) works by helping, albeit not fully, to make it more likely that the products bought in response to the direct mail advertising would instead be bought by people who drive to a store, thus helping make the conclusion a little more likely to be true. In this way it is a necessary assumption, but there are a lot more than just this one.

Answer choice (D) doesn't actually strengthen the argument, because it addresses a parallel issue of whether direct mail advertising is effective at getting people to buy things, as opposed to whether people are buying them in ways that don't involve driving. So this answer choice doesn't strengthen the argument, which is based upon whether the environmental cost of the advertising offsets the environmental cost of driving to buy stuff in the absence of the advertising, meaning makes it more likely that people are driving to stores less. And this answer choice doesn't make it more likely that someone would forego use of a car or not, only more likely that they would buy the product advertised. If anything, this might weaken the argument, by allowing us to infer that direct mail advertising just encourages people to buy more stuff, not necessarily making them drive to the store less.

Hope this clears things up!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Alex,

I think that's an interesting way to think of it. The basic premise here is that direct mail marketing saves people from having to drive to the store to do some of their purchasing, which they are now able to do online/phone because of the marketing materials sent to their house directly. The author uses this premise to support the claim that direct mail marketing is not bad for the environment as others have suggested.

I agree that it seems a bit strange to think about direct mail marketing in the age of Amazon. I can't remember the last time I picked up my mail and paid any attention to the advertisements.

Hope that helps!

[alexmcc]

Thanks! I'm working on keeping my personal biases and external information outside of my reasoning for these questions.

[lsatstudying11]

Hello,

I got this question correct and can see how B strengthens the argument, however, I am a little bit confused about something. How are we able to assume that direct-mail advertising is bad for the environment because of issues like paper and shipping? My pre-phrase for this question was something like travel to and from a store matters for the environment whereas the travel and byproducts of shipping things via mail does not matter really for environmental concerns. Am I thinking about the argument in the wrong way? And how important is it for us to be aware of the idea that maybe people problematize direct-mail advertising because of things like paper and shipping?

Thanks in advance!!

[Adam Tyson]

We don't need to assume anything about whether shipping and packing materials are or are not bad for the environment, lsatstudying11. We need to look at why the author thinks direct mail is not as bad for the environment as some people perceive it to be.

Focus on their evidence: if not for direct mail, people would have to drive somewhere if they wanted to buy this stuff, and that would cause pollution. Based on that evidence, the author concludes that direct mail is not so bad for the environment. The implication seems to be that by using direct mail, buyers are avoiding trips by car that would otherwise cause pollution.

Now, how do we strengthen the connection between that evidence and that conclusion? We get there by saying that the implication is true: consumers would have actually gotten in the car and driven somewhere if they couldn't get the thing they wanted by direct mail, thus adding that pollution to the air. If that's the case - if people would have driven somewhere to buy the thing instead of just not buying the thing - then the author's argument looks better. Not perfect, perhaps, because maybe all that shipping and the paper in the mailings does pollute, maybe even more than the car trips would. But we aren't trying to justify the conclusion here; we only need something that helps, even if only a little. Confirming the author's underlying assumption about people driving does help, just as denying that assumption would hurt.

[mahsan]

Hello,

I'm confused about the scope of the conclusion here. I understand that the author concludes that based on the evidence of less car usage, the perception that direct mail-advertising is bad for the environment is misguided. However, what if less car usage isn't the only factor that determines whether something is bad/not bad for the environment?

I actually thought B weakened the conclusion b/c if most of the products purchased in response to the direct mail-advertisements were going to be purchased anyways, they were wasting paper, thus possibly (not necessarily) strengthening the perception that these advertisements were bad for the environment.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Do I need to only weaken the evidence he gives in the premise and not the conclusion as a whole?

[mahsan]

Hello,

I'm confused about the scope of the conclusion here. I understand that the author concludes that based on the evidence of less car usage, the perception that direct mail-advertising is bad for the environment is misguided. However, what if less car usage isn't the only factor that determines whether something is bad/not bad for the environment?

I actually thought B weakened the conclusion b/c if most of the products purchased in response to the direct mail-advertisements were going to be purchased anyways, they were wasting paper, thus possibly (not necessarily) strengthening the perception that these advertisements were bad for the environment.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Do I need to only weaken the evidence he gives in the premise and not the conclusion as a whole?

Sorry, I meant strengthen the evidence he gives in the premise ?***

[Adam Tyson]

When we want to strengthen an argument, mahsan, we don't need to help it very much, although of course we want to pick the answer that does the most from among the options we are given. Sometimes, the correct answer provides just a tiny bit of help, but some help is better than no help, and the other answers here provide no help at all. Answer B helps at least a little by confirming one of the underlying assumptions the author relied upon, that the products bought by direct mail were going to be purchased by those consumers one way or another.

Strengthen the link between the premises and the conclusion, and that's good enough. Confirming that an assumption is correct does that!

[jrschultz14]

Hi! For me, this question really boils down to being able to anticipate the right AC -- after reading the stimulus, I focused on the fact that they assumed shipping / paper waste was less harmful for the environment than driving a car to the store. I completely missed the other assumption that DMA was merely replacing and not increasing the amount of purchases.

Do you have any recommendations for how to anticipate the answer on some of these difficult strengthening questions? I've found that some of them "click" because the immediate flaw I discovered is the correct flaw to focus on, while on others (as was the case here), the flaw I saw was not the correct one to focus on -- which crushes my performance on the question.

Obviously, I should be more flexible when reading the ACs, but on the difficult questions the correct AC is often so subtle, that getting it right is incredibly difficult if you didn't anticipate it beforehand.

Thank you so much for any help!

[Robert Carroll]

jrschultz,

Two points: you did focus on a flaw to address, so your thinking on this question was on the right track. If an answer had addressed your point, it would have been right, so your prephrase would have worked out perfectly. And, as you've noticed, often your prephrase IS an answer. So to that extent, you were doing what you should have on this question.

Second point: don't let your prephrase give you tunnel vision. Your prephrase was a good idea, but you have to evaluate answers with the thought "Does this strengthen the argument?" That's slightly different from "Does this match my prephrase?" Your prephrase DOES strengthen, so it'd be a great thing to find, but it's not the ONLY way to strengthen, so you should think "Does this answer get at some other way to strengthen besides the one I was looking for?"

It's not possible to prephrase every way to strengthen an argument - that would take too long. So you'll sometimes be in a situation where you accurately prephrased, but missed other ways to strengthen, and need to maintain the flexibility to consider alternatives. I think it's asking too much to think you could prephrase every way to answer any given question, so, while I think it's always good to think of multiple ways to answer a question (or even just multiple different general concepts you want the answer to hit upon), even the best LR scorers are going to be in your position - especially for the later and more difficult LR questions. That's why they're difficult and why they take more time.

Robert Carroll