Does the case proceed analytically?

Question

1. Can we not simply calculate our market share?

A1: We know there is only 2 competitors in the market
A2: We have total units sold
A3: We have our units sold
-→ 12% market share (1800 EV units clients / 15000 EV units)

2. Comparing product fit to segment
From the graphs we can deduce the following:

O1: For smaller EV (150) we are targeting only <30 years segment, with 100 km
O2: For bigger EV (300) we are targeting only >50 years, 300 km
O3: Our competitor is only targeting >50 years, 250km
Conculusion: We are not competing when it comes to young folks and when it comes to 50 years we are (a) worse in price, (b) better in distance and (c ) in product features (assuming we are comparing fully equipped).

Case Observation: The observation of the case is that EV is for young folks under 300 km. Why would the case argue that? We don't have the relative share of the total market per each segment, so we can not make that assertion.

Instead what the case should ask is how our customers are valuing each of the relevant criteria, e.g. distance, price, equipment.

Without knowing this, the case continues to ask how to go about the margin problem? However, if we don't know what caused the problem in particular (e.g. why did below 30 people not pay for our cheap 150km car?) we haven't dentified the source of our flat sales yet.

Can someone please help me understand this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Ah ha!

You have uncovered an under-spoken truth when it comes to casing: Most cases don't make perfect sense!

Yes, this is true! This even applies to some cases I have written.

Why?

Well, a few reasons:

We have 20-25 minutes to cover a complete real-world scenario
Real life is complicated and there can be many ways to approach 1 problem
The case was written to test you on various things, not to be perfectly logical
People make mistakes

So, is your logic sound? Probably (I'm not sure…it was a lot to try to read and disgest and I don't quite follow your thinking). Are there imperfections in this case? Probably? Does that “matter” for casing? Nope!

Some of the most illogical and random cases that I've seen are literal cases from interviews at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc.

Ultimately, go with the flow of the interviewer, but continue to use logic and reasoning as you do so.