To improve customer relations, several big retailers have recently launched "smile initiatives," requiring their employees to smile whenever they have...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
To improve customer relations, several big retailers have recently launched "smile initiatives," requiring their employees to smile whenever they have contact with customers. These retailers generally have low employee morale, which is why they have to enforce smiling. However, studies show that customers can tell fake smiles from genuine smiles and that fake smiles prompt negative feelings in customers. So the smile initiatives are unlikely to achieve their goal.
The argument relies on which of the following as an assumption?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| To improve customer relations, several big retailers have recently launched "smile initiatives," requiring their employees to smile whenever they have contact with customers. |
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| These retailers generally have low employee morale, which is why they have to enforce smiling. |
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| However, studies show that customers can tell fake smiles from genuine smiles and that fake smiles prompt negative feelings in customers. |
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| So the smile initiatives are unlikely to achieve their goal. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument starts by describing smile initiatives, then explains why these smiles will be fake (due to low morale), provides evidence that fake smiles backfire with customers, and concludes the initiatives will fail.
Main Conclusion:
Smile initiatives are unlikely to achieve their goal of improving customer relations.
Logical Structure:
The author links low employee morale \(\rightarrow\) fake smiles \(\rightarrow\) negative customer reactions \(\rightarrow\) failed initiatives. The key assumption is that low morale employees will produce fake smiles, which the studies show customers can detect and dislike.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Assumption - We need to find what the author must believe to be true for their conclusion to work. If we can find a way to break the conclusion while keeping all the stated facts, we've found an assumption.
Precision of Claims
The argument makes specific claims about retailer conditions (low morale), employee behavior (enforced smiling), customer abilities (detecting fake smiles), and outcomes (negative customer feelings). The conclusion is qualified as 'unlikely to achieve their goal.'
Strategy
Look for gaps in the logical chain from 'low morale employees + enforced smiling + customers detect fake smiles' to 'initiatives won't improve customer relations.' We need to identify what must be true to connect these pieces without questioning the given facts about studies, morale levels, or customer detection abilities.
This choice suggests the initiatives successfully get employees to smile. However, this doesn't need to be assumed for the argument to work. The author's conclusion could still hold even if only some employees comply with the smile requirement. The argument is about the quality of smiles (fake vs. genuine), not the compliance rate.
This is exactly what we need for the argument to work. The author concludes smile initiatives will fail, but this only makes sense if fake smiles are no better than whatever expressions low morale employees would naturally have. If fake smiles were actually preferable to scowling or indifferent faces, the initiatives might still improve customer relations despite being artificial. The author must assume fake smiles don't improve the situation.
This goes beyond what the argument requires. The author doesn't need to assume that employee-generated feelings are the 'principal' determinant of customer spending. The argument is specifically about whether smile initiatives will improve customer relations, which could happen even if other factors are more important for spending decisions.
This is too extreme and unnecessary. The argument doesn't require that zero employees gave genuine smiles before. Even if some employees were genuinely friendly, the argument could still work if the majority of low morale employees produce fake smiles that customers dislike.
While this might seem relevant, it's not necessary for the argument. The author's conclusion about fake smiles being problematic doesn't depend on genuine smiles being universally well-received. The argument focuses on the negative impact of fake smiles, not the positive impact of genuine ones.