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Market Sizing Question: Paper cup market in the US

Hi all,

I've got a case interview coming up next week and one of my friends told me that this has recently been a common theme of the interview.

I'm quite stuck as to how to approach this though, I'm thinking perhaps I could estimate how many on average people use a paper cup on a daily/monthly basis?

So it'd be [ Population * Average paper cup consumption * Price ].

However, I feel like this would require me to make a pretty vague assumption on the "average paper cup consumption" part, and also this does not really capture the paper cups that are yet to be used. (Eg. Inventory in a cafe.)

I'd appreciate it if you could give me some insights / guide me in the right direction.

Thanks.

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Top answer
Ian
Coach
on Jul 11, 2021
Top US BCG / MBB Coach - 5,000 sessions |Tech, Platinion, Big 4 | 9/9 personal interviews passed | 95% candidate success

Hi there,

If you're going to break it down by population consumption, make sure to do an additional split (i.e. city vs rural and/or income bands).

Break it down in the time unit that you personally can most relate to (I buy x amount on x basis...my friends do x).