Question
Advertisement: Today’s customers expect high quality. Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations. The company that is satisfied with the current quality of its products will soon find that its customers are not. At MegaCorp, meeting or exceeding customer expectations is our goal.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
The Story
Advertisement: Today’s customers expect high quality.
Sure!
Every advance in the quality of manufactured products raises customer expectations.
As the quality of products advances so do customer expectations, and that too for every advance in quality.
The company that is satisfied with the current quality of its products will soon find that its customers are not.
Customers stop being satisfied with the quality of products of companies that are satisfied with the quality.
At MegaCorp, meeting or exceeding customer expectations is our goal.
The company’s goal is to continually meet or exceed customer expectations.
Gist: Customers’ definition of high-quality becomes more stringent with every advance in quality. A company that is satisfied with the current quality will soon see its customers stop being satisfied. And, the company’s goal is to meet or exceed customer expectations.
The Goal
We’re looking for something that can be inferred on the basis of the passage. Customer expectations rise with an improvement in quality, and the company’s goal is to meet or exceed them. So, we can infer that in order to meet its goal, the company will continually try to work toward advancing quality. Of course, there could be other inferences as well.
The Evaluation
(A) Incorrect. We do not know what all factors ‘attract customers’. For example, while customers might expect high quality, they might be okay to compromise on quality for a low price. There is nothing given in the passage to infer that customers get attracted on the basis of quality alone. Besides, even if we are told that customers are attracted on the basis of quality alone, still we cannot infer this option since a company that does not have Mega Corp’s goal may still produce far better products than Mega Corp does.
(B) Incorrect. The passage nowhere talks about either correctly anticipating the expectations of the customers or the consequences of it. Even from a common-sense perspective, a company may advance the quality of its products without correctly anticipating the expectations of its customers. The only way to advance the quality of products is not through correctly anticipating the expectations of customers. E.g. a company may improve the quality of products simply on the basis of a gut-feel.
A test-taker may not anticipate what kind of questions the teacher will ask. He may still study thoroughly, succeeding on the test. Advancing the quality of products is not necessarily based solely on correctly anticipating the expectations of customers.
(D) Incorrect. Say a company becomes satisfied with the quality and thus stops working on improving quality. All that tells us is that the quality of products will not further improve. We cannot infer that the quality ‘is sure to decline’. The quality may very well remain at the current level.
(E) Incorrect. The advertisement never gets into what the current satisfaction level of the customers is. Moreover, all we know is that meeting or exceeding customer expectations is the company’s goal. There is nothing given to suggest whether the goal is currently being met.
This solution was created by Anish Passi and Chiranjeev Singh.
If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask in the comments section.
Anish Passi
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