LSAT 126 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q7

LR Question 7 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Packaging is vital to a product’s commercial success…

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

ANALYSIS: The stimulus tells us that the new product failed, despite having tested well. It failed because the can made it look like the old product. People thus had expectations that the new product would be like the old, and were disappointed.

To take an extreme example, imagine that The Coca-Cola Company produces a really, really, really good rat poison. All professional exterminators agree it is a great product.

Yet it still probably won’t sell very well if Coke packages it in cans which make it look like their popular corn-syrup and carbonated-water product, Coca-Cola.

___________

1. No, this is silly. The stimulus does not tell us that a well packaged piece of junk would have been more successful.
2. If I accurately package a terrible product, it probably won’t sell very well.
3. The stimulus doesn’t support this. In fact, it supports the opposite. If the new product had been packaged better, it probably would have sold better.
4. CORRECT. This is pretty well supported. The new product created false expectations, and it failed. Try not to do that if you’re ever selling anything.
5. We don’t know what would happen if it was packaged better, or about improved versions of products in general. If I were to sell updated “Fix your Y2K problem” software now, in 2011, it probably won’t sell very well.

Recap: The question begins with “Packaging is vital to a product’s commercial success”. It is a Most Strongly Supported question. Learn how to master LSAT MSS questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.