To improve customer relations several big retailers have recently

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?


A) The smile initiatives have achieved nearly complete success in getting employees to smile while they are around customers.

B) Customers' feelings about fake smiles are no better than their feelings about the other facial expressions employees with low morale are likely to have.

C) The feelings that employees generate in retail customers are a principal determinant of the amount of money customers will spend at a retailer.

D) At the retailers who have launched the smile initiatives, none of the employees gave genuine smiles to customers before the initiatives were launched.

E) Customers rarely, if ever, have a negative reaction to a genuine smile from a retail employee.