LSAT 117 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q16

LR Question 16 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Retailers that excel in neither convenience nor…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: A retailer’s success doesn’t necessarily depend on being excellent at both convenience and variety.

REASONING: It is true that a retailer with neither variety nor convenience usually fails. Many successful retailers excel in one area and simply meet competitor’s standards in the other areas.

ANALYSIS: This is a good argument. It is not necessary that businesses excel in both areas. It proves this by showing that some businesses succeed without excelling at both.

It does show that one of either variety or convenience is often necessary though. Businesses with neither typically fail.

So the structure is: you usually need one but not necessarily both of two important attributes.

___________

1. CORRECT. This is a good argument and matches the structure. You need one of the two qualities but not necessarily both. 
2. The first part of this argument only gives one factor rather than two. And then two new factors are introduced. This is completely different. 
3. This talks about how excelling in all areas practically guarantees victory. The stimulus didn’t say if excellence guaranteed anything. It just pointed out that you don’t need to be excellent at everything to succeed.
4. This switches between eating and baking. The stimulus stuck to one thing: retail success.
5. This just tells us that some plants with the same characteristics are weeds and some aren’t. It doesn’t talk about plants not needing both characteristics to be weeds.