Q3 - Banking Analyst: Banks often

[noah]

Surprisingly tough question for #3!

The conclusion is that offering free services to new customers is not an ideal business practice. Why not?

Because the majority of a bank's customers--the regular long-term ones--are excluded from such offers.

What's the gap? Well - can we say the practice is not ideal just because those folks are excluded? Maybe they don't care or notice? And maybe that's what's needed to attract new business. It seems like the premise is hinting at some sort of reaction by those folks, but we don't hear about it. So, maybe it's still an ideal practice.

(B) addresses that gap by pointing out that the real ideal practice is something else (offering perks to the most loyal customers).

(A) is out of scope - we're not comparing banks.

(C) is tempting, but it just helps explain why the practice being evaluated is more affordable than others. Even if we know (C) were true, it might be true that not offering any free services is the most ideal practice. Note that (C) doesn't really weaken the argument though it seems to: just because offering free services to everyone is too expensive doesn't mean that offering them to just new customers is the ideal practice.

(D) is oddly tempting. It tells us that folks tend to stick with their bank. Perhaps it's tempting because it seems like that mean that the old-timers don't care if the newbies get freebies - but if anything, that would weaken the argument! In the end, we don't care about how those folks behave - we want to know if the business practice is ideal or not.

(E) is also tempting - but if anything, it weakens. We want to hear that the practice is NOT ideal, not that it works sometimes. Also, "some" is pretty vague - is that two banks? And, are those banks offering those free service only to new customers?


#officialexplanation

[theonlyrij]

Hi!

I was wondering if you could please explain why B is correct.

To me the argument goes like this:
Banks often offer various services to new customers at no charge
+
Regular long-term customers... are excluded from these special offers

Concl: This (offering new customers service at no charge and exluding long-term customers) is not an ideal business practice

I chose C because we need to strengthen the argument an to me showing that offering and I know it is wrong because it says "no charge to all its customers"

But I still do not understand how B strengthens it!

Thanks!

[d.andrew.chen]

(B) Banks do best when offering special privileges only to their most loyal customers.

The conclusion of the argument is that offering various services to new customers at no charge is not an ideal business practice on the premise that they're excluding the bulk of their customers.

(B) strengthens because it states that the best business practice (more ideal than the current one) is one where the most loyal customers (part of the bulk...and thus excluded to getting no charge) are the only ones receiving special privileges, which is not the case in the bank in question. The ideal business practice would not give privileges to new customers, which the bank in the case does do.

[hippo3717]

I chose C...

But just to make sure I really got this question right...

If C were to say "offering services at charge to all of its NEW current customers would be prohibitively expensive for a bank," wouldn't it be the better answer?" (and probably, this was the way I interpreted the answer choice when I read it in the first place)

The stimulus says that the loyal customers are the ones who are paying for the services so having the new customers taking advantage of their money seems not to be ideal.

Therefore, I am eliminating C because of the word "all customers."

[noah]

I chose C...

But just to make sure I really got this question right...

If C were to say "offering services at charge to all of its NEW current customers would be prohibitively expensive for a bank," wouldn't it be the better answer?" (and probably, this was the way I interpreted the answer choice when I read it in the first place)

The stimulus says that the loyal customers are the ones who are paying for the services so having the new customers taking advantage of their money seems not to be ideal.

Therefore, I am eliminating C because of the word "all customers."

It was a bit unclear from your message, but it seems you know that (B) is the right answer. Anyway,

I'm always wary of "what if" LSAT question conversations, but I'll give it a shot. I'd say that if (C) say that offering the services at no charge to new customers is too expensive, it still would not strengthen the argument, it would perhaps strengthen the conclusion that it's not the ideal practice by giving a different reason. But, we are asked to strengthen the argument, meaning the connection between the given premise and the conclusion.

Make sense?

[hippo3717]

Thanks for your explanation.

Let me ask you another question:
as far as I am concerned, sufficient or necessary questions are specifically designed for the takers to find out how to connect premises and conclusion, since there is always a gap between them.

However, according to your explanation and this question, sometimes I feel as though strengthen questions ask the takers to do exact same thing as what they would do for the necessary or sufficient questions, so called "bridging." Simply put, I feel like some strengthen questions can be categorized as "necessary" questions as well.

So what I want to really ask is

If I ever see a gap between the conclusion and premises for the strengthen questions, most likely, I would be finding out which answer would actually "bridge" the gap? After all, necessary/strengthening questions always contain fallacious arguments.

[noah]

Thanks for your explanation.

Let me ask you another question:
as far as I am concerned, sufficient or necessary questions are specifically designed for the takers to find out how to connect premises and conclusion, since there is always a gap between them.

However, according to your explanation and this question, sometimes I feel as though strengthen questions ask the takers to do exact same thing as what they would do for the necessary or sufficient questions, so called "bridging." Simply put, I feel like some strengthen questions can be categorized as "necessary" questions as well.

So what I want to really ask is

If I ever see a gap between the conclusion and premises for the strengthen questions, most likely, I would be finding out which answer would actually "bridge" the gap? After all, necessary/strengthening questions always contain fallacious arguments.

Yes, strengthen questions are similar to assumption questions. From your question, I get the sense you haven't read our LR book. At the risk of sounding like a salesman, I think you'd get a lot out of it. We discuss a lot the connection between the question types.

[kpopstar123]

So...

as far as I am concerned, the argument can be broken down as:

Excluded -> Not ideal.

Now, we have to find something that fills up the gap, which can explain why that practice isn't ideal.

B says that bank only gives out its benefits to loyal customers.
This is another way to say that "new customers" aren't getting the good service from the bank, which I guess... isn't ideal.

Any thoughts?

[noah]

So...

as far as I am concerned, the argument can be broken down as:

Excluded -> Not ideal.

Now, we have to find something that fills up the gap, which can explain why that practice isn't ideal.

B says that bank only gives out its benefits to loyal customers.
This is another way to say that "new customers" aren't getting the good service from the bank, which I guess... isn't ideal.

Any thoughts?

I like your angle's simplicity! I think it's a bit clearer for me to think of it in terms of the contrapositive:

ideal --> not excluded

(B) props that up, showing that the ideal is something else.

[tzyc]

Hi Noah,
Let me double check whether I got it right...
So (B) says banks do best when they offer special privileges only to their most loyal customers.
And the stimulus says since regular long term customers are excluded from the offers, it's not ideal.
(B) says there is best practice other than what the practice (Best≒ideal) so supports conclusion that the practice is not ideal.
I first thought the author connects "their most loyal customers" to "regular, long term customers", but it does not have to be right?
Sorry if what I say does not make sense or just repeat what you say...I have a headache and seems to have fever

[noah]

Hi Noah,
Let me double check whether I got it right...
So (B) says banks do best when they offer special privileges only to their most loyal customers.
And the stimulus says since regular long term customers are excluded from the offers, it's not ideal.
(B) says there is best practice other than what the practice (Best≒ideal) so supports conclusion that the practice is not ideal.
I first thought the author connects "their most loyal customers" to "regular, long term customers", but it does not have to be right?
Sorry if what I say does not make sense or just repeat what you say...I have a headache and seems to have fever

Looks like you got it.

I don't think the strength of the link between long-term customers and most loyal customers is very important since we only need to establish that some strategy is better than offering no-charge banking to only new customers. Clearly, new customers are not the most loyal customers.

[timsportschuetz]

I think the main reason (C) is wrong is due to the following: The argument concludes that providing special free privileges to ONLY new customers is not an ideal business practice. Thus, we can reasonably infer that providing these same services to the long-term existing customers would potentially create an ideal business practice. (C) states that offering these services to all of the current customers would create a bad effect on the business. Thus, (C), in a very odd and tricky way, actually completely weakens the argument!

On this particular question, you must make the unusual step of slightly interpreting the unstated assumption! This assumption is: Regular, long-term customers should be eligible for these same special offers as well! This practice would yield an ideal business practice...

[anuragkp24]

I see why the answer is B and not C from the postings above, but doesn't B suffer from degree?

I was down to B and C and ruled out B because of the high degree involved, "do best" and "most loyal".

[christine.defenbaugh]

I see why the answer is B and not C from the postings above, but doesn't B suffer from degree?

I was down to B and C and ruled out B because of the high degree involved, "do best" and "most loyal".

Great question, anuragkp24!

It's great to be aware of degree, or the strength of the language in answer choices. However, whether we should be skeptical of strong language or receptive to it depends on the question type that we are dealing with.

For a Necessary Assumption or an Inference question, for instance, strong language should make us very wary - it's not something that makes an answer automatically wrong in all cases, but it's something we'd need to carefully investigate.

However, for a Sufficient Assumption, Strengthen, or Weaken question, strong language is actually pretty cool. Strong language is a bit more likely than weak language is to actually have an impact on the argument (guarantee, support, or undermine).

Since this is a Strengthen question, strong language is just fine!

Here, the extremeness of "do best" is awesome for undermining. If banks "do best" in one situation, then that would destroy the conclusion that the "ideal" is something else!

Does that help clear up a few things?

[dennisgerrard]

Does answer choice D somehow weak the argument??(if new customers stayed on one bank, offer no-charge deal may be a good practice)

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, for sure.

Without digging too deeply into whether it GENUINELY weakens the argument, it would immediately strike me as weaken-ish.

I'd be thinking, "Well if these old customers are pretty much locked in, then why do I need to even worry about them?"

[ShubhiT942]

I think this question is being made out to be more difficult than it is. Answer C is incorrect because it addresses "current customers." However, the stimulus addresses regular, long term customers. Just because someone is currently a customer doesn't mean that they've been long term or regular. Therefore, due to this being a "shell" answer, we can eliminate it. Moreover, because it is a shell answer it doesn't bridge the gap between new and long term customers. Answer choice B makes more sense because regular, long term customers would be the most loyal to the bank (weird inference though) and therefore, if banks do best by offering it to these people, then the other proposed practice isn't ideal. Hence, B ties in the "gap" between the new customers and the long term, regular customers and strengthens the conclusion.

Also side note: The conclusion talks about the fact that offering free services to new customers is not an ideal business practice. Answer choice C talks about offering free services to current customers. This does nothing to address how the new proposed service would not be an ideal business practice.