I had an interview today asking “how to grow a restaurant company's market share from #10 currently to #3 in 5 years”. I spent some time trying to figure out what does being #3 in market share in 5 years mean in terms of revenue, since I was trying to rephrase the prompt as achieve X revenue in 5 years. However, not much information regarding market size, market growth, etc was given and I was a bit stuck. In the end the interviewer asked me to use the current #3 market share as a proxy to reflect the market share needed to be achieved in year 5.

I felt a bit confused since this approach just seemed to “simplified” and “unrealistic” to me. On the other hand, I feel sometimes interviewer just want to hear your concept and thoughts instead of bogging down to detail. However, I'm still figuring out the balance. Could you provide some advice of what should be done? For instance, maybe I should firstly clarify whether we should translate the “market share goal” to “specific revenue numbers” first? Thank you.