PrepTest 123, Section 3, Question 22
If the price it pays for coffee beans(60 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- AIf the Coffee(16 more words not shown)
- BIf the Coffee(19 more words not shown)
- CThe Coffee Shoppe's(15 more words not shown)
- DThe price it(14 more words not shown)
- EEither the price(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
These options don't leave the coffee shop much room to escape.
Start with the rising cost of beans. If that continues, the shop will raise its prices. I can picture the pressure: more expensive beans mean a more expensive cup of coffee. Under the next rule, those higher prices lead to at least one of two outcomes: the shop starts selling noncoffee products, or its coffee sales fall.
Try the first option. Maybe the shop adds bagels or sandwiches. We are told that selling noncoffee products lowers its overall profitability. That route doesn't rescue it.
Now try the other option: coffee sales fall. The last sentence says the shop can avoid lower profitability only if coffee sales don't fall. So once sales fall, avoiding that loss of profitability is no longer an option. This route leads to lower profitability too.
What we’re looking for
Both routes reach the same result. If bean costs keep rising, the shop raises prices and ends up with lower profitability, whichever of the two outcomes follows. That's the statement I'd look for in a question asking what must follow. Keep the starting point attached: we haven't been told that bean costs actually will keep rising.
Working the answers
- A
This starts with lower profitability and tries to work back to rising bean costs. But we've only established one way profitability could fall, not the only way. The shop might face a different cost or operating problem even if beans don't become more expensive. Lower profitability doesn't prove this particular chain occurred.
- B
Again, lower profitability could have another cause. Perhaps the shop's rent rises while coffee sales remain steady and it sells no other products. Nothing in the passage rules that out. Selling noncoffee products and losing coffee sales each lead to lower profitability; that doesn't mean every decline in profitability has to involve one of those two events.
- CCorrect
Read the part after “if” first: bean costs continue to increase. That triggers higher shop prices. Higher prices lead to noncoffee products or declining coffee sales, and each of those routes brings lower overall profitability. C joins the beginning of the chain to its unavoidable result.
- D
The rules concern what happens if bean costs keep increasing. This answer is about costs decreasing. The passage gives us no rule requiring profitability to fall when the shop pays less for its beans. We can't swap a decrease into a rule about an increase and expect the same result.
- E
Neither outcome has been established. Bean costs might stop increasing while coffee sales stay exactly where they are. That situation violates none of the rules we've been given, yet neither part of E would be true. Knowing what follows if a price increase occurs doesn't establish that the price increase—or an increase in sales—will actually occur.
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