Fretter Appliances sold more refrigerators in 2015 than in any previou

Question

Fretter Appliances sold more refrigerators in 2015 than in any previous year, and most of the refrigerators it sold that year were purchased by residents of Oakland County. However, most refrigerators purchased by residents of Oakland County in 2015 were not purchased from Fretter Appliances.

Which of the following conclusions can be logically drawn from the statements above?

A) At least one store in Oakland County sold more refrigerators in 2015 than Fretter Appliances did.
 B) In 2015, more refrigerators were purchased by residents of Oakland County than were sold by Fretter Appliances.
 C) Residents of Oakland County purchased more refrigerators in 2015 than in any previous year.
 D) Fretter Appliances sold more refrigerators to residents of Oakland County in 2015 than it did in any previous year.
 E) At least some residents of Oakland County purchased refrigerators from stores not located within Oakland County in 2015.

AnubhutiSharma · Answer

I am a bit uncertain about B though. 
B mentions that "In 2015, more refrigerators were purchased by residents of Oakland County than were sold by Fretter Appliances."

Premise states that : 
1. Fretter Appliances sold more refrigerators in 2015 than in any previous year, and most of the refrigerators it sold that year were purchased by residents of Oakland 
2. Most refrigerators purchased by residents of Oakland County in 2015 were not purchased from Fretter Appliances.

Lets assume Fretter Appliances sold 100 refrigerators in total.
most of the refrigerators it sold that year were purchased by residents of Oakland, lets assume 30 refrigerators. Rest all were purchased by residents of some different places. Statistics could be 10,20,15,5,20 = 70

Most refrigerators purchased by residents of Oakland County in 2015 were not purchased from Fretter Appliances. Lets say, 40 refrigerators were purchased by residents.

Now, B states that "In 2015, more refrigerators were purchased by residents of Oakland County than were sold by Fretter Appliances."
But Fretters sold 100 refrigerators and residents of Oakland purchased only 40 out of which 30 were from Fretters.
B could have been correct if statement would have been 
"In 2015, more refrigerators were purchased by residents of Oakland County than were sold by Fretter Appliances" TO RESIDENTS OF OAKLAND.

Please correct my understanding.
I find D a better suit.

Requesting experts to reply.
 souvik101990   carcass   GMATNinja  
or anyone who could provide correct explanation :)

johnhohng · Answer

B is the correct answer.

Even if Fretter Appliances sold most of the refrigerators to residents of Oakland County, most refrigerators purchased by residents of Oakland County  do not have to  be purchased from Fretter Appliances  if and only if  they purchased more refrigerators than were sold by Fretter Appliances.

Let's say Fretter Appliances sold 80 out of 100 refrigerators to residents of Oakland County and residents of Oakland County purchased 200 refrigerators. That means residents bought 120 refrigerators (200-80=120) from stores other than Fretter Appliances since 80 were bought from Fretter Appliances out of 200 total.

Bombsante · Answer

Hi, what the argument is trying to make us believe is that Fretter sold more and sold most of its product to Oakland folks while at the same time that year most of the same product was not purchased by Oakland folks from Fretter.
Therefore, it must mean that Fretter could not have a high market share of the product that Oakland folks purchased that year. Ans B clearly states that. Folks bought more product but the same was not from Fretters i.e. Fretters sold less.

SonalSinha803 · Answer

Hi Anubhuti,

I also got a bit uncertain. But it is because we missed a small detail -

1. 'most' of the refrigerators were sold to Oakland County people

2. ' most ' of the refrigerators that people from Oakland County bought were not from Fretter Appliances.

Thus, take total refrigerators sold by Fretter Appliances = 100

Fretter Appliances sold say, 60 refrigerators (has to be more than 50%)

Total refrigerators bought by Oakland County people = 60 + 70(minimum, since most of the refrigerators are not by Fretter) = 130

130 > 100

Thus, option B is right.

Option D is just a restatement of only a part of the argument.

Hope it helps.

Sent from my Lenovo K53a48 using  GMAT Club Forum mobile app

Bunuel · Answer

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

This Inference problem forces you to deal with the provided statistics, which guarantee that choice B must be true. To prove that, you could use a variable for the number of refrigerators that Fretter sold to residents of Oakland County (let's call it x) or you can borrow a tool from your Word Problems / Quantitative toolkit and pick a number (such as 50) .

You know that most (so > 1/2) of the refrigerators that Fretter sold were to residents of Oakland County. So the number of refrigerators that Fretter sold in total must be less than 2x, or less than 100.

You also know that more than 1/2 of the refrigerators sold to residents of Oakland County were NOT from Fretter. So Fretter's x (or 50) refrigerators are less than half of Oakland County's refrigerator sales. Oakland County's sales then are > 2x, or > 100. This allows you to directly compare the two totals: The number of total Fretter sales is less than the number of total Oakland County sales. Choice B is therefore proven.

Among the incorrect answer choices:

With choice A, recognize that no one store had to sell more in Oakland County than Fretter in order for Fretter's sales to be less than 50% of the county's. Several smaller stores could add up to that >50% amount.

With choice C, there is just no information to draw this conclusion: Fretter's 2015 was its greatest ever, but you don't have any information about Oakland County's historical sales.

Choice D can be eliminated by considering extreme cases when picking numbers. If this year Fretter sold 100 refrigerators overall (its best year ever) and 51 in Oakland County (more than half its total sales), you could still have Fretter selling 90 last year (consistent with 2015 as its highest ever sales) with all 90 of them coming from Oakland County (just a much higher percentage of its sales coming from Oakland County in a previous year).

And choice E is a choice that seems likely to be true, but that has no proof anywhere in the stimulus. On Inference questions, if you can't find direct proof, the answer choice is not necessarily true and must be eliminated.

Choice B is correct.

Albymana · Answer

Oakland bought (at least) 50%+1 of all the items produced by Fretter.

For the majority of Oakland items to be bought from different supplier, it means that 50%+1 is not the majority overall.

Thus total items bought by Oakland must be highly than total sold by Fretter.

Posted from my mobile device

VerbalBot · Answer

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