|Question 8Verbal

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Marketers of goods often emphasize popularity or expert approval (e.g., "Japan's best-selling car" or "gum preferred by dentists"). To assess the effects of these types of recommendations, Kamal Bookwala and her team asked consumers to choose between two cupcake flavors in several different scenarios: when neither flavor had a recommendation label (the baseline condition), when one flavor was labeled with either "most popular" or "baker's choice" information and a thumbs-up approval symbol, and when one flavor was labeled with only a thumbs-up symbol (to control for the increased product prominence any recommendation label confers).
What does the text most strongly suggest would have been a limitation of the findings if Bookwala and her team had not included conditions with only a thumbs-up label?
The researchers wouldn't have been able to determine whether differences in consumers' choices between the baseline condition and the conditions with recommendation labels were caused by the content of the labels or the mere fact that labels were present.
A
The researchers wouldn't have been able to determine whether differences in consumers' choices between the baseline condition and the conditions with recommendation labels were attributable to a positive effect of recognizing an indication of approval.
B
The researchers wouldn't have been able to rule out the possibility that differences in consumers' choices between the baseline condition and the conditions with recommendation labels were due to consumers' awareness of an attempt to influence their decisions.
C
The researchers wouldn't have been able to compare the effects of labels emphasizing popularity with the effects of labels emphasizing expert approval.
D