Solutions

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Question

TrueSave is a mail-order company that ships electronic products from its warehouses to customers worldwide. The company’s shipping manager is proposing that customer orders be packed with newer, more expensive packing materials that virtually eliminate damage during shipping. The manager argues that overall costs would essentially remain unaffected since the extra cost of the new packing materials roughly equals the current cost of replacing products returned by customers because they arrived in damaged condition.

Which of the following would it be most important to ascertain in determining whether implementing the shipping manager’s proposal would have the argued-for effect on costs?


 

Option A:

Whether the products shipped by TrueSave are more vulnerable to incurring damage during shipping than are typical electronic products

Option B:

Whether electronic products are damaged more frequently in transit than are most other products shipped by mail-order companies.

Option C:

Whether a sizable proportion of returned items are returned because of damage already present when those items were packed for shipping

Option D:

Whether there are cases in which customers blame themselves for product damage that, though present on arrival of the product, is not discovered until later

Option E:

Whether TrueSave continually monitors the performance of the shipping companies it uses to ship products to its customers.

Difficulty Level

Hard

Solution

Option C is the correct answer.


Option Analysis

Question type: Evaluate the argument.  

Summary of the argument: The manager proposes that newer and more expensive material needs to be used to pack all of the material because currently there is a high cost replacing the products damaged during transit.  

 

A) We don’t need to know which products incur more damage. We need to find out whether the damage is happening or not.  

B) Same as A. We need not know which product incurs more damage. We need to know whether the damage is really happening.  

C) Correct Answer 

D) Even if there are cases where the customers blamed themselves, it doesn’t help evaluate the logic of the argument.  

E) Doesn’t matter as we are concerned with the costs.  


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