There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market

Question

There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.

If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?

(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales.

(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product.

(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.

(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.

(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products.

Same passage with different question:  LINK

KarishmaB · Accepted Answer

Premises:

75 brands of microwave popcorn account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. 
Microwave popcorn takes 3 minutes while conventional takes 7 minutes. 
Microwave popcorn costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn.

Conclusion: Many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.

We are looking for an inference fro the passage. So the option should have no new information.

(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales.
We know there are 75 brands but that doesn't mean that market share is split equally among them. Once brand may have a good 20% chunk or so. A single brand may account for a large share. Note that we don't know what a 'large' share is either. Hence, this is very subjective. It is certainly not our inference.

(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product.
We are not given whether any other food product has more brands. It is possible that say, there are 100 brands of ready to cook meals but they all account for only 20% of the sales from microwave food products.

(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.
We do not know this. We know that microwave popcorn is popular but whether more microwave popcorn is sold or conventional popcorn, we are not given.

(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.
Microwave popcorn takes 3 mins to cook and accounts for more than half the sales of microwave food products. So more than half the money spent on microwave food products is spent on microwave popcorn which takes 3 mins to cook. Hence, we can conclude that more money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook. Correct.

(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products.
We know that sales of microwave popcorn accounts for more than half but do we know whether microwave popcorn products account for most of the microwave food products on the market? No.

Answer (D)

AmoyV · Answer

There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.

If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?

(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales. Not true. We could have one big mammoth and the rest of the 74brands might comprise barely 1% of the market

(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product. We have no information of other microwave brands. We cant claim this.

(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn. Since microwave popcorn costs 5 times more than conventional popcorn, the reverse is probably true.

(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook. This is true. From the stem we know that microwave popcorn account for over half of the microwave food market and popcorn takes 3mins to pop in the microwave. So we know for sure that this statement is true.

(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products. Not necessarily true. The other brands in the microwave food brands which are not selling pop-corns could be more than 75

ravikrishna1979 · Answer

Hi VeritasPrepKarishma

(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.
We do not know this. We know that microwave popcorn is popular but whether more microwave popcorn is sold or conventional popcorn, we are not given.
 Agree that it is never told whether more people are buying microwave popcorn, but it is clearly mentioned many people are buying.

(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.
Microwave popcorn takes 3 mins to cook and accounts for more than half the sales of microwave food products. So more than half the money spent on microwave food products is spent on microwave popcorn which takes 3 mins to cook. Hence, we can conclude that more money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook. Correct. 
 It is never discussed whether more people buy products of less than 3 mins  than  other microwave products. It is just informed that more microwave popcorn is being purchased.

I think D is totally out of scope as it is discussed in terms of Popcorn products for Microwave and conventional variety but not to the relation of any other product's purchase comparison with Microwave Popcorn.

Please correct my understand if I am thinking very differently.

KarishmaB · Answer

"Many" is not the same as "majority". Out of 100, 30 could also be considered many.

The argument gives you : 75 brands of microwave popcorn account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products.

So you know that microwave popcorn account for more than half the sales from all microwave food products. It compares popcorn to other microwave products. So the text in red in your explanation above is not correct.

Poorvasha · Answer

There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.

If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?

Since, this is a must be true type of question, all the statements given in the stimulus are premises.

(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales.-  Not necessarily true. We can't conclude that no single brand accounts for a large share. There are 75 brands which is said constitute majority of the portion of the microwave food product sales but it could be possible that 1 out of these brands is dominant or it could also be likely that none is a dominant one.
 
(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product: Again the argument mentions that microwave popcorns constitute a majority of the portion of the microwave food product sales but does not say anything about its number of brands in relation to the total.

(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn:  Though, it is mentioned that many people prefer microwave popcorn to conventional one, it does not necessarily state that these people account for the majority of sales too. Many does not imply majority and also, preference does not necessarily translate into sales .

(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.:  Microwave popcorn is a microwave food product that takes three minutes or less to cook and it is also mentioned that microwave food products constitute more sales , in return implying that more money is spent on microwave food products. This can reasonably be implied and is the answer.

(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products :  This is not implied by the argument anyhow. It only states sales are more not availability in the market.

Skywalker18 · Answer

1. microwave popcorn takes 3 minutes to cook AND accounts for over half of all microwave food sales.
2. microwave costs 5x more than conventional popcorn

Now for the choices:
(A) eliminate. we know nothing of the market share of different brands.

(B) eliminate. we know nothing of brands of other products.

(C) eliminate. we know nothing about volume.

(D) ?? products that take less than 3 minutes vs others? Doesn't sound right.

(E) eliminate. we know nothing about the number of products.

At this point I'd go back to (D). What do I know about products that take 3 minutes or less to cook? Well, I know that popcorn fits into that category. And I know that popcorn ALONE accounts for over half of all microwave food sales.

Now, what do I know about "products that take longer to cook?" I know this category does not include popcorn and therefore accounts for LESS THAN HALF of sales.

Therefore, I can conclude that POPCORN ALONE outsells any other group of foods, including the group that takes longer than 3 minutes. Potentially including other foods with the popcorn (all foods that take 3 min or less) only increases the sales gap between that group and the group of foods that takes longer.

egghead2017 · Answer

I don't agree with the explanation. We don't know whether the non-popcorn products take more than 3 mins to get prepared.

lostnumber · Answer

This is true. BUT we know the following premises:
1) Microwave Popcorn takes 3 minutes to pop
2) Of all the money spent on Microwave products, Microwave popcorn is slightly over half

Think of it like a math inequality. We know that Microwave popcorn is over 50%, so lets say for the sake of the argument that its 55% of the marketshare for microwave products. If 55% of money is spent on popcorn, and popcorn takes 3 minutes to cook, then over 50% of all money spent on microwave products is spent on products that take 3 minutes or less. It doesn't matter how long it takes the other 45% to cook, it could be 1 minute or it could be ten. Since our percentages need to add up to 100, even if EVERY OTHER microwave product took 4 minutes, we would still have only 45% of money being spent on products that take 4 minutes or more, which is going to be less than the 55% spent on popcorn.

This is a good question because it is tricky but demonstrably true without any subjectivity

abhishekmayank · Answer

Non satisfactory  KarishmaB .

There is no mention of the timeline of cooking of the  non popcorn  microwave products. Such products can take less than, more than, or even equal to 3 mins.

KarishmaB · Answer

We already know that popcorn takes 3 mins and accounts for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. (Say of every $100 spent, $52 is spent on popcorn and $48 on all other products, whatever time they may take to cook)
So more than half the money comes from popcorn (which takes 3 mins). So more money is spent on microwave food products that take 3 mins or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.

Sanchit19 · Answer

Why are we assuming that the rest of the microwave products take longer to cook than microwave popcorn? The argument doesn't state this. There may be products which take even less time to cook, than microwave popcorn. I eliminated D for this very reason.

KarishmaB · Answer

We are not assuming it. We know that popcorn take 3 mins so they are a part of "3 mins or less" group. Whether there are other products in this group, we don't know, but pop corn is certainly there. We are also given that popcorn account for more than 50% of the money from sale of microwave food products. 
Hence we can conclude that more money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.

stavyah · Answer

How do we know the other microwave products take longer to cook?

stavyah · Answer

Does more sales mean more money spent? Could we not have a scenario where there are more sales, however, the products are priced lower? Since we do not know anything about the price of the products, how can we be sure that more money is spent?

There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market

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There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market

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