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Bill board advertising

by siddhu161 » Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:01 pm
A certain city offers publicly owned, desirable billboard-advertising space at heavily discounted monthly rates to locally owned businesses. Since the implementation of this policy, the city has increased the amount of billboard space sold per month. Nevertheless, the city could increase its revenues by revoking these discounts.

Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the claim above regarding the city's revenues?

A. The amount of discount generally offered is carefully calculated to represent the minimum needed to drive sales to local businesses.

B. The discount was announced through select news channels and websites, but did not receive sufficient coverage for many local businesses to hear about it.

C. Many local businesses sub-lease their billboard space to non-local businesses at a significant markup.

D. For established local businesses, the purpose of this promotion is to allow such local businesses to fortify their market position against new chain stores that generally have better access to high-visibility advertisement space.

E. Prior to the implementation of the discount, many city-owned billboards went empty for lack of interested buyers.

Confused between B and C. C is OA n seems correct but it does not help understanding the argument correctly. If city can revoke discount without any drop in revenue it means bill-boards advertising is doing well because of some different reasons which helps evaluating the argument as whole.
Please help in zeroing down my problem areas for critical reasoning. I come up with 2 best choices and go on to select wrong one.
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by KevinRocci » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:06 pm
Hi there! I think that I might be able to help! :)
siddhu161 wrote:Confused between B and C. C is OA n seems correct but it does not help understanding the argument correctly. If city can revoke discount without any drop in revenue it means bill-boards advertising is doing well because of some different reasons which helps evaluating the argument as whole.
To help answer this question, let's break the argument down first:

conclusion: increase revenues by eliminating discounts.

premise: local business get a discount on billboards
premise: city has sold more add space since starting the program

I think that you are right. The program must be successful because of the placement of the ads or the location of the billboards. And you are right the answer choice doesn't help us to evaluate the argument. But we don't need an answer choice to help evaluate the argument. We need an answer choice the supports and strengthens the argument. We need to find the answer that most strongly supports the conclusion that revenues would increase. The correct answer does this. It provides a reason for why revenue would increase if they discontinued the discount.

Does that make sense?

Now the answers you are deciding between are good ones to focus on. And this brings us to your next question.
siddhu161 wrote:Please help in zeroing down my problem areas for critical reasoning. I come up with 2 best choices and go on to select wrong one.
Usually the key to choosing the right answer when you have two choices left, especially with strengthening and weakening questions, is to ask yourself a simple question: which one of these is necessarily true? Another way to think about it: which one of these is true regardless of the situation?

So if you are left with two options, always choose the one that is necessarily always true. So you have to shift your thinking to find the right answer. You are trying to imagine situations in which the answer choice might break down or might not be true. If you can find a scenario in which the answer choice might be true, then you have found the wrong answer.

With the wrong answer you were looking at, this is definitely true. It might be a reason why revenue could increase, but it isn't related really to the discount, and there is no necessity that revenue will go up if they advertise the program more.

I hope this helps. :)
Kevin
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by [email protected] » Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:46 pm
Hi siddhu161,

This CR prompt is a fairly lean Strengthen question.

The Facts:
-City policy offers billboard space at HEAVY DISCOUNTS to locally owned businesses.
-Since implementing the policy, the city increased the amount of billboard space sold per month.

Conclusion:
-The city could INCREASE REVENUE by revoking (removing) these discounts.

To strengthen the logic, we need an answer that supports the idea that removing the discounts could lead to an increase in revenue. Since locally owned businesses are the ones who are buying the billboard space, the correct answer will either tell us that the local businesses will pay more money to rent the billboards OR someone else will pay more money to rent the billboards.

Answer C describes how other businesses are already buying up the billboard space (by going through the local businesses) and paying a higher rate. In theory, those businesses could go through the city instead (at the higher rate); thus the city would increase its revenues. Answer B does not explain how the city would make more money, so it does not strengthen the prompt.

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