In the 2010s, the price of pop music cassette tapes from the 1980s and 1990s rose dramatically, which had the...
GMAT Craft and Structure : (Structure) Questions
In the 2010s, the price of pop music cassette tapes from the 1980s and 1990s rose dramatically, which had the counterintuitive effect of ______ demand: buyers who hadn't previously wanted to purchase vintage cassettes thronged the market, believing prices would continue to rise and the tapes could be resold later at a profit.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
exploiting
monetizing
appraising
engendering
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| "In the 2010s, the price of pop music cassette tapes from the 1980s and 1990s rose dramatically" |
|
| "which had the counterintuitive effect of _______ demand:" |
|
| "buyers who hadn't previously wanted to purchase vintage cassettes thronged the market" |
|
| "believing prices would continue to rise and the tapes could be resold later at a profit" |
|
Provide Passage Architecture & Core Elements
Main Point: Rising cassette prices unexpectedly created more demand as buyers entered the market hoping to profit from continued price increases.
Argument Flow: The passage sets up a market scenario where cassette prices rose dramatically, then reveals this had an unexpected effect on demand, and finally explains that buyers were motivated by speculation rather than deterred by high prices.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
This is a fill-in-the-blank question asking us to choose the best logical connector. The answer must create the right relationship between what comes before and after the blank.
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The key is understanding what is counterintuitive
- Normally, when prices rise dramatically, we would expect demand to decrease
- But here, the opposite happened - demand actually increased because buyers saw the high prices as a signal that prices would keep rising, making the tapes good investments
- So we need a word that means creating or causing demand, since the high prices generated demand where there was not any before
exploiting
Exploiting
✗ Incorrect
- Exploiting means taking advantage of existing demand
- This does not fit because there was not existing demand to exploit - the passage says buyers had not previously wanted to purchase these tapes
- The word suggests using something that already exists, but demand was actually created by the price rise
monetizing
Monetizing
✗ Incorrect
- Monetizing means making money from demand
- This describes what sellers might do, not what happened to demand itself
- The sentence structure requires a word describing what happened to demand, not how someone used it
appraising
Appraising
✗ Incorrect
- Appraising means evaluating or assessing the value of demand
- This does not describe an effect on demand - it describes studying demand
- Students might choose this because the passage mentions prices and value, but appraising demand does not make logical sense in context
engendering
Engendering
✓ Correct
- Engendering means causing or bringing about
- This perfectly captures how high prices actually created demand where none existed before
- Matches our prethinking: the counterintuitive effect was that rising prices generated new demand rather than reducing existing demand
- The logic flows: high prices led to engendered demand which led to buyers flooding the market