Independent concert promoters, in order to maintain their credibility and compete with larger, publicly traded promoters, must represent the concert tours of well-known artists. To attract such business, these private companies have had to increase their guaranteed payments to famous clients. To offset these increases, smaller promoters have raised their ticket prices, resulting in low attendance at a number of recent shows.

Which of the following assertions is best drawn from the information above?

(A) Independent concert promoters often lose money by representing well-known artists.

(B) The largest independent concert promoter has fewer employees than the smallest publicly traded promoter.

(C) Ticket price is the most important determining factor for concert attendance.

(D) Future ticket prices for well-known artists will continue to increase.

(E) The contracts between concert promoters and artists are not always based solely on revenue generated by ticket sales.

I am confused between (C) and (E). (C) is an extreme answer choice but isn't it true in the context of this question? Raising ticket prices resulted in lowering attendance and no other reason for the lower attendance has been mentioned in the argument. So shouldn't (C) be correct?

IMO E.
Using fact test : to maintain their credibility and compete with larger --> Well known artists --> Ticket prices raise.

just because no other reason is mentioned, you can't conclude that no other reason exists!

analogy:
let's say tonight's dinner tastes better than last night's dinner, so i eat 10% more food at tonight's dinner.

* does this prove that the taste of the food is a factor in determining the quantity of food that i eat?
yes.
* does this prove that the taste of the food is the most important factor in determining that quantity?
not at all.
for instance, my level of hunger is probably a much more important factor; it's just not mentioned here.

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hi Ron,

i have two doubts
1) as this question belongs to DRAW A COCLUSION type, we need to remain with in the context of stimulus content.so we can not assume something that is not intended by the stimulus.

2)if the example would have been ...

let's say tonight's dinner tastes better than last night's dinner. I eat 10% more food at tonight's dinner.[SO is missing]
then only we are not allowed to make a correlation into a causal attribution.
but insertion of words such as SO or RESULTING explicitly leads us to do a causal attribution between what is before and what is after these words.

But i do agree that (C) is killed by its extreme wording(most important)

please shed some light

thanks

Satya:

1) Yes, I mostly agree with you. We do need to remain within the scope of what the argument says.

2) I would agree with you there too. The "so" is very important in showing the taste of the dinner to be a factor in the amount consumed.

Did you have other questions?

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ManhattanGMAT Instructor