medium · GMAT Verbal
Last quarter, a national retail chain identified the fifteen stores with the single worst sales figures out of its four hundred locations and enrolled them in an intensive one-on-one coaching program for store managers. This quarter, those fifteen stores' average sales rose by eighteen percent, and regional leadership attributes the gain entirely to the coaching program, proposing to roll the same program out to every store in the chain and projecting a similar eighteen percent increase chain-wide.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens leadership's projection?
- The fifteen stores were chosen because they had the single worst sales that quarter, partly driven by temporary factors like weather or turnover unlikely to recur.
- The coaching program requires every enrolled store's manager to attend two additional hours of coaching and feedback sessions each week.
- The chain's overall sales, across its other three hundred eighty-five stores, grew only slightly during the same quarter.
- Several of the fifteen stores are located inside shopping malls, while most of the chain's other locations are free-standing buildings.
- The coaching program's per-store cost, including consultant fees and training materials, is still lower than the average cost of opening an entirely new store location.
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