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A grocery chain moved several of its snack items from low shelves to eye-level shelves. Over the following month, sales of those relocated snacks rose 30 percent. The chain's analysts have cautioned, however, that this increase may not show that eye-level placement boosts sales of the snacks, because ___.
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Correct answer
A
Complete the passage by supplying what the argument logically needs. The analysts concede that sales of the relocated snacks rose 30 percent, but they caution that this rise may not show that eye-level placement is what boosted sales. The connector 'because' calls for a reason the rise might be due to something other than the new placement. The completion that does this is an alternative cause for the very same increase.
(A) is correct. If the chain ran a television campaign for those exact snacks during the same month, the advertising is a competing explanation for the 30 percent jump. The rise could have come from the campaign rather than from the shelf move, which is precisely the doubt the analysts raise. Notice the test: it names a different cause that operated on the same snacks over the same period, so it directly loosens the tie between placement and the increase.
(B) trades on the shared word 'shelves.' How many items a shelf holds is a storage fact; it is irrelevant to whether the new placement, rather than something else, caused the sales increase. It addresses the wrong link.
(C) restates a baseline: the snacks were already top sellers before the move. That describes the level of sales beforehand, not the cause of the increase afterward, so it neither explains the rise nor offers a competing cause for it.
(D) points the wrong way. If snacks moved in the opposite direction, from eye-level down to low shelves, lost sales, that pattern actually supports the idea that placement drives sales. It strengthens the placement explanation instead of casting doubt on it, so it cannot complete a 'because' that introduces doubt.
(E) over-reaches. Saying shoppers rarely notice shelf position would deny that placement could matter at all, but the analysts are only warning that this particular rise might have a different cause. The sweeping claim also sits awkwardly with the fact that sales did rise, so it is not the reason the caution requires.
The right answer is (A).
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