A recent SAT featured a challenging vocabulary in context question that discussed the relative importance of pricing and breadth of retail distribution on a product’s brand success. The passage clearly states that pricing “made a much less pronounced contribution to brand success than retail distribution breadth.” But research also found that pricing is not unimportant.
You are forgiven if this seems confusing. But wait, the qualifying phrase “pricing though hardly” provides a key clue that will lead you to the correct answer. It tells us that pricing has some effect. It is thus hardly or far from being IMMATERIAL TO or irrelevant to a product’s brand success.
The choice CONTINGENT ON tempted many students. CONTINGENT means dependent on. Although pricing is a factor, brand success is not CONTINGENT ON a product’s price. A careful reading of the passage reveals that pricing is not as important as how widely a product is distributed. IMMATERIAL TO is the most logical choice because it best fits the context of the passage.
IMMATERIAL TO – irrelevant; unimportant
CONTINGENT ON – dependent on