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

kaylarussell June 13, 2020

I am still not understanding the correct answer choice.

d. The bookstore does not have exclusive access to a large specialized market but profitable sells some of its books at below-market price. I don’t understand why this choice cannot be true. I don’t understand because it is an either or question. My understand was the even if it does not have exclusive access to a large specialized market it can still profitably sell some of its books below-market price because it might cater to the mass taste. I don’t know if that makes sense but because you need to either cater to the masses OR to have exclusive access to a large specialized market then isn’t it true that you can sell books for below market price if you don’t have exclusive access to a large specialized market as long as you cater to mass taste? Thanks in advance!

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shunhe June 13, 2020

Hi @kaylarussell,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at what the argument is telling us, and this is definitely one we’ll need to diagram for, based on the “unless” and “only” words in the stimulus. We’re told that the only way bookstores can profitably sell books at below-market prices is to get the books at a discount from publishers; in other words, bookstores can profitably sell at below-market prices only if they get the books at a discount from these publishers. Remember we diagram “X only if Y” as X —> Y, so we diagram this

SBBMP —> GBDP

Next sentence: unless bookstores generate a high sales volume, they can’t get discounts from publishers. Remember we diagram X unless Y as ~Y—>X (or, equivalently, its contrapositive, ~X—>Y). So we get:

~GHSV —> ~GBDP

Finally, we’re told that to generate such volume, bookstores must either cater to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, or both. In other words, if they do generate such volume, then they fulfill one or both of those conditions. So we diagram this

GHSV —> CMT v EALSM

Now we’re told that a bookstore doesn’t cater to mass tastes. What can we conclude from this? Well, let’s take the contrapositive of the last statement:

~(CMT v EALSM) —> ~GHSV

And recall that ~(X v Y) is equivalent to ~X & ~Y, so we can rewrite this as

~CMT & ~EALSM —> ~GHSV

OK. So we already know ~CMT is true for this bookstore. If we also knew ~EALSM, we could get this logical chain moving. This is what (D) tells us: that the bookstore also ~EALSM. This allows us to conclude ~GHSV, which allows us to conclude ~GBDP. Taking the contrapositive of the first statement, we get

~GBDP —> ~SBBMP

And so we can also conclude that for this bookstore, ~SBBMP. It can’t sell any of its books at below-market prices if it also doesn’t have exclusive access to a large specialized market, and so (D) is false.

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