Critical Reasoning

Although the discount stores in Goreville's central shopping district are expected to close within five years as a result of competition from a SpendLess discount department store that just opened, those locations will not stay vacant for long. In the five years since the opening of Colson's, a nondiscount department store, a new store has opened at the location of every store in the shopping district that closed because it could not compete with Colson's.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
(A) Many customers of Colson's are expected to do less shopping there than they did before the SpendLess store opened.
(B) Increasingly, the stores that have opened in the central shopping district since Colson's opened have been discount stores.
(C) At present, the central shopping district has as many stores operating in it as it ever had.
(D) Over the course of the next five years, it is expected that Goreville's population will grow at a faster rate than it has for the past several decades.
(E) Manystores in the central shopping district sell types of merchandise that are not available at either SpendLess or Colson's.

Answer is B

I can't understand explanations of OG regarding this question.

Great question Amir. This argument is stating that, although these discount stores will go out of business because of SpendLess, other businesses will fill the store locations before long. The evidence? When Colson put stores out of business, other new businesses filled in the vacant slots.

Answer choice B is correct here because if the stores that opened since Colson's opened were discount stores, then they were not competing directly with Colson's. They were targeting a different segment of the customer population, most likely in order to avoid that competition. But SpendLess is a discount store, meaning that there are now heavy weight contenders in both the traditional and discount department store space in this shopping plaza. The only other option would be potentially premium stores. But the fact that the discount and traditional department stores will struggle to open here effectively weakens this argument.

I hope this helps!!!