Hi

You can expect to have 3 types of market sizing questions:

1) Top down market sizing questions

• Calculate the number of gas stations in the US
• Calculate the size of credit cards market in the US
• How much domestic trash is collected each year in the US (in m3 or tons)?

2) Bottom up market sizing questions

• You know that Citi bank has a portfolio of 200 bln credit cards in x country. Calculate the size of the market
• You know that there are 40 tube stations in the Centre of Moscow. Calculate the number of Starbucks cafes in Moscow

3) Guesstimate questions

• If all the humans in the world were crammed together, how much area would we require? Compare this to the area of a large city, a state or a small country, the US, Asia
• How many golf balls would it take to circle the Earth at the equator?

I have answered a similar question and provided a detailed solution to a market size.

Have a look here: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-should-i-approach-the-following-question-estimate-the-market-size-of-credit-cards-in-the-us-6695

Best,

Anton

Hello!

There is something key here: there is not going to be an isolated maket sizing question in a Mck interview.

Why do I mean with this? They won´t ask you, just like that, how many liters of olive oil are consumed by italian households.

However, you can find this question incorporated in an overall case (e.g., you are helping a groceries company, you do the full analysis of different gowth scenarios... and at the end, in the math part in which you are helping them size the olive oil market in Italy, you end up doing that part)

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hi there,

McKinsey interviews can have a huge range of cases that might or might not include market sizing. The best advice is to prepare for any type of market sizing.

If you need any examples of market sizing cases (and how to solve them), feel free to reach out.

I hope this helps

Khaled

It is unlikely you will be asked a straight up market sizing question as part of your case interviews at McKinsey. Almost all of these estimations will be part of a case and usually not something very time consuming either. The one exception here is in the final round - if they want to test your quantitative ability a partner could ask you to estimate the market size of a product or a non-traditional market sizing question as well (e.g., number of cars that cross brooklyn bridge in a given day)

Best,

Udayan

Hi Anonymous,

It's a rare exception at McKinsey that you will be asked a pure market sizing question - it won't give me that much of an insight, compared to a full-blown case interview.

However, market-sizing questions might well be incorporated into an overall case, so definitely you need to be prepared for that.

The only known situation I can think of a pure market-sizing question is on top of a case interview, in case I finished a bit earlier than expected and still want to use a few minutes of time for further/better evaluation of a candidate.

Hope that helps - if so, please be so kind and give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hi,

Probably a market sizing encompassed in a larger / classical case. But you still have to be prepared for all eventualities. When I interviewed at OW for example I had to tackle an isolated market sizing.

David

Dear A,

There is no market questions apart from the case. What I would recommend you is to practice cases more and more, better with peers here on the platform or with some of the experienced coach to get structured feedback.

Good luck,

André