Get Active in Our Amazing Community of Over 452,000 Peers!

Schedule mock interviews on the Meeting Board, join the latest community discussions in our Consulting Q&A and find like-minded Case Partners to connect and practice with!

How to estimate the # of business in china?

Market sizing
New answer on Mar 14, 2021
3 Answers
996 Views
Floyd asked on Mar 04, 2021

Hello everyone!

What do you think of this approach?

  • To estimate the # of business that buy firewors I would find # people of working age on China that work on firms / Average # people per firm.
  • To estimate the number of people of working age in China I would start by Chinese population x % in working age that work in firms.
  • For that I would start segmenting 1b population into population on working age 52.5% (Population between 18-60 years) = 525 m. Then I would segment this by % Employed ( 90%) and % Unemployed (10%), then I would segment the %Employed into % Working by firms (80%) and % Self employed (10%), this would give me a 380m.
  • To estimate the Average # people per business I would do the following segmentation: - 20 employes for 90% of firms - 50 employes for 9% of firms - 200 employes for 1% of firms This gives me 18. So I get 21.1 m

Thank you everyone.

Overview of answers

Upvotes
  • Upvotes
  • Date ascending
  • Date descending
Best answer
Ian
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 04, 2021
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate

Hey Floyd!

First, thanks for being so active on the Q&A!

Now, I can't help but note that this is like your 10th Market Sizing post.

Furthermore, your approach is always not quite right. You do all kinds of assumptions/step that really just beat around the bush, then you jump to a random estimation. For example, points 1-3 above do nothing for you! Point 4 is the entire point of the case...and you just put a finger in the air and guess. THIS is where you have to start the market sizing (i.e. break things down to figure out what this number could be).

You're really missing the point of market sizing...I highly high advise a coaching session to run home how you need to think about/approach market sizing.

Was this answer helpful?
Floyd on Mar 06, 2021

Hello Ian, Thank you for your answer. I'm wondering, should I segment even more to get the # of business that sells fireworks?

Clara
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 06, 2021
McKinsey | Awarded professor at Master in Management @ IE | MBA at MIT |+180 students coached | Integrated FIT Guide aut

Hello Floyd!

Love that you are so active here with your market estimations :)

For this particular example: I would actually advise the more "conventional" ones. This, without further gudance, is more complicated than what you would usually find in an MBB interview.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Was this answer helpful?
Raj
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 14, 2021
FREE 15MIN CONSULTATION | #1 Strategy& / OW coach | >70 5* reviews |90% offers ⇨ prep-success.super.site | MENA, DE, UK

There are many similar questions with useful answers on preplounge already, like below:

  • https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-would-you-go-about-calculating-how-many-solar-panels-are-used-in-a-country-9320
  • https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-would-you-estimate-the-market-size-for-vegan-shampoos-in-the-uk-9150
  • https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/b2b-market-sizing-no-b2c-8982
  • https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-to-market-size-the-opportunity-for-stripe-9290
  • https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-many-wealthy-people-are-in-the-uk-8819

Fundamentally the structure and approach will be equivalent in all these cases and in the example you have stated above

Was this answer helpful?
Ian gave the best answer

Ian

Content Creator
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate
1,096
Meetings
77,564
Q&A Upvotes
232
Awards
5.0
151 Reviews