The only way that bookstores can profitably sell books at below-market prices is to get the books at a discount from ...

BenMingov November 17, 2019

Hi Anthony-Sivash, thanks for the question!

This stimulus creates a long but easy to follow set of conditional statements. Let's go through them.

"The only way that bookstores can profitably sell books at below market prices is to get the books at a discount from publishers." This creates the following conditional diagram: Profitably sell books below market price - > Discount from publisher

"Unless bookstores generate a high sales volume, however, they cannot get discounts from publishers." The conditional diagram for this statement is as follows: Discount from publisher - > High sales volume

"To generate such volume, bookstores must either cater to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, such as medical textbooks, or both." This creates the final conditional diagram: High sales volume - > Cater to mass tastes OR Have exclusive access to large specialized market

Of course, you would create abbreviations for both the necessary and sufficient conditions to save time, but I hope that by writing them out, it was easier to follow.

When there are conditions that are both necessary in one condition and sufficient in another, it is then possible to link the two diagrams.

This creates the following:

Profitably sell books below market price - > Discount from publisher - > High sales volume - > Cater to mass tastes OR Have exclusive access to..

Answer choice B says that a bookstore that caters to mass tastes or has exclusive access to a large specialized market will have a high sales volume. This makes the mistake of using the necessary condition to conclude that something else must occur. Only a sufficient condition occurring tells us that a necessary condition occurs. When a necessary condition occurs, this tells us no new information.

The contrapositive of a statement, however, would tell us that if a bookstore DOES NOT cater to mass tastes AND DOES NOT have access to a large specialized market, then it will NOT have high sales volume.

I hope this helped. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Connor July 11, 2021

I'm having trouble conceptualizing the final condition:

"To generate such volume, bookstores must either cater to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, such as medical textbooks, or both." This creates the final conditional diagram: High sales volume - > Cater to mass tastes OR Have exclusive access to large specialized market"

When I did this question for the first time, I reversed it, seems like a common mistake. Can you dive into why High Sales Volume (HSV) is the sufficient condition and not the necessary. It kinda makes sense to me but I'm not sure how I might catch something similar on another question?