Almost the entire demand for milk products in Hamilton County is

The argument depends on which of the following assumption?


A Mother Dairy's sales volumes and revenues were much higher last year compared to the year before.

B Mother Dairy's operating expenses have not seen a reduction from last year to this year.

C The distribution centers that have remained open have sold less volumes of milk this year than they did last year.

D Very soon, Mother Dairy will no longer be able to monopolize the milk market in Hamilton County.

E Mother Dairy is not one of the businesses that get most of their business from customers outside Hamilton County.


Though I marked C, E seems more closer.


A, B, and D are Irrelevant.

C compares the volume difference for this year and last year, but we don't know how much the difference.

It may be very less or very high. Less volume does not mean less revenue. It may happen the rates might have increased.

E assumes that MD has most of it's business established in HC, so assuming that E is better than C, but not convincing.

As the premise says MD is a very large establishment we can expect that 4 outlets is a negligible number. Argument is assuming

that MD is not much flourished in HC, so closing of 4 outlets will affect the revenues.

More suggestions are welcome.

Negating C DOES NOT crash the conclusion

Negated C: The distribution centers that have remained open have sold same volumes of milk this year as they did last year,
but still because of other closed distributed centers it will loose sales and revenues.

C shell game answer.

A Mother Dairys sales volumes and revenues were much higher last year compared to the year before.
B Mother Dairys operating expenses have not seen a reduction from last year to this year.
C The distribution centers that have remained open have sold less volumes of milk this year than they did last year.
D Very soon, Mother Dairy will no longer be able to monopolize the milk market in Hamilton County.
E Mother Dairy is not one of the businesses that get most of their business from customers outside Hamilton County.

Not convinced that E should be the answer and here's why:

Option E says: "Mother Dairy is not one of the businesses that get most of their business from customers outside Hamilton County." In other words, Mother Dairy IS a business that gets most of its business from customer from within Hamilton county. Nowhere in the passage it is mentioned that MD has distribution centers in Hamilton county. It could possibly have distribution centers within or outside the county limits. The milk requirements for Hamilton county are being met primarily by MD and this does not necessary mean MDs main customers are Hamilton county residents. Thus E is not an assumption necessary for the conclusion.

The only valid conclusion that comes close is C because if the distribution centers which are to remain open sell less, then yes, their total sales and revenues will naturally be affected.

I don't think this question is representative of an actual GMAT question. Is there a way on GMAT club to apply multiple filters to narrow down on questions? For e.g. I want to attempt, all CR, 700 level, OG, GMAC paper questions only.

Hi sid,

I think you are looking for something like this .
https://gmatclub.com/forum/search.php?view=search_tags

Though i suggest you not to go for official stuff straight. Go for making a strong base first, then only focus on official stuff. good luck.

I am attempting to do that but then every now and then I come across questions like these on GMATClub which "feel" not representative of the official GMAT and there is no official explanation from a qualified professional. And I have read several people say that practicing from the official materials is the best use of time. What do you advise?

Thanks for the link BTW, sent some sweet kudos your way.

Thanks for that Sid.

About that I want to point you to a different direction here. What I want to suggest is that you should have your own framework for every question type and every situation. use your framework to the question. and once in a while if framework fails on non official question, you should not mind it.accept their solution and move on. Not all questions are bad. What is important is official question. Once you attempt a question, read solutions others have given. find if there is any gaps in your thinking.

For assumption questions, I usually go with my gut and internal reasoning versus the norm on gmatclub: negate the response to see if the conclusion still stands because I feel negating each answer type takes longer and confuses me further, not sure if I can explain it. Do you think internal reasoning/going with your gut is a framework that can help with assumption CR in the long term?

Ofcourse not. and i suggest nothing should be on gut feel. there should be a solid base for everything. Let me tell you what i would do. No matter what question is I will find the conclusion. Such as in this case.

Conclusion: Mother Dairy’s sales volumes and revenues this year will be less compared to those last year. why this is happening? - in the past six months, four of Mother Dairy distribution centers have closed down, and no new ones have opened up.

Now before going to read any answer choice, pre-think. Ask your self why things are happening. such as in this case. my pre-thinking - i say nothing new supply of MD is coming up. and there is no new demand. Basically I applied demand and supply. You should read a bit about it. Mind that pre-thinking is needed so that you have some idea of the direction for answer. It need not to be true.

Now always Use POE. you need to remove 4 wrong answers. Here is my elimination process.

A. Mother Dairys sales volumes and revenues were much higher last year compared to the year before. ---- Yes but how this is related to the sales of upcoming year. No way.

B. Mother Dairys operating expenses have not seen a reduction from last year to this year. --- again operation expense will not affect next yr sales. although it will be a load on revenue.

C. The distribution centers that have remained open have sold less volumes of milk this year than they did last year. ---- Suppose 10 stores were there. 4 of them were closed. remaining 6 suppose running on full capacity. can they get the same sales ?

D. Very soon, Mother Dairy will no longer be able to monopolize the milk market in Hamilton County. --- Out of scope.

E. Mother Dairy is not one of the businesses that get most of their business from customers outside Hamilton County. --- What if yes for this.if all milk is sent outside then closing these centers is a good idea for sales and revenue. closing will save some revenue in these centers. so conclusion falls. This option must be true.

Hope it helped.

How can you suppose that they are running in full capacity. Previously they ran on normal capacity.
C tells that they did not increase sales from these opened.

Suppose MD owns 10 distribution centers each used to sell 10Million packets of milk. 4 - closed down.
C is saying these 6 distribution centers did not sell more packets to compensate for the 40 million packets sales difference.

So i opted C.
E says: what if its business is outside than inside. - Still it lost 4 outlets, and it will not affect anything. I think this is irrelevant. So what if people buy from outside city. We don't know whether each of the distributors will sell more this time in outside or will sell less outside.

abhimahna, GMATNinja Can you please tell me where am going wrong. Am still not sure why E is right. I have given my reasoning in above statements.

Thank you

Premise 1: Hamilton County's milk product demand is met by Mother Dairy
Premise 2: 4 of Mother Dairy's distribution centers have been closed and no new ones have been opened.
Conclusion: Sales Volume and Revenue of Mother Dairy will be less this year compared to previous year.

Pre-thinking: Other stores of Mother Dairy didn't generate enough revenue to increase the overall revenue of Mother Dairy.

It comes down to C and E. My two cents is on C. Because, C states that the other distribution centers have sold less volumes of milk this year than last year. Notice here that it doesn't say anything about Hamilton County. Those distribution centers can be anywhere. (within/outside Hamilton County). Point is, overall Sales hasn't gone up and surely this will be less than sales of previous year.

Now, Option E. Option E states that,

"Mother Dairy is not of the businesses that get most of their business from customers outside Hamilton County"

Now, look at the premise 2. Premise 2 never says that the closed distribution centers are in Hamilton County. It just merely says, out of existing distribution centers, 4 are closed. Now, negate the assumption. Let Mother Dairy has all of its business from outside Hamilton county.

1.Where are the distribution centers closed? No.

2.Does this breaks the conclusion by saying anything about Revenue/Sales? No

3. Is there any relation b/w having distribution centers in Hamilton and outside Hamilton and Sales/Revenue? No

So the answer choice is C.

Hi abhimahna, I got a doubt in your explanation,
The conclusion says that "It is clear that Mother Dairy’s sales volumes and revenues this year will be less compared to those last year."
If 4 centers are down. And It makes most of the business from outside. Won't the revenues and sales be less compared to last year?
Conclusion is not that : MD is seriously affected by these closures.
Can you please clarify this part a bit.

Thank you in advance.

Hey Nightmare007 ,

You missed an important word "MOST". If they are getting most of their business from outside(say 99%), there could be possibility that the change in that 1% of the business is negligible as compared to the entire business. What if the outside business got increased?

Again, this MOST could have very extreme meanings, hence we need to make sure this MOST thing is not happening in order to keep our conclusion intact.

Does that make sense?

The OA's are given in the original posts under the spoiler. For this question it's E.

OA is E. Every OA will be provided below the question.

Hi Bunuel, bb,
The problem with this comment is that he is using GmatClub mobile app. We cannot see spoilers in mobile App. Is it possible to update it, so that even mobile app users can utilize timers and spoilers. ?

Yes. Soon. That’s all I can say right now.

Posted from my mobile device

Hi All,

I chose B for this question, if the operating expenses have not reduced from the past year, then there will be fewer outlets managing the expenses and directly the revenue would be lower.

Is there something I am missing?

Thanks