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Market Sizing - Can you help me?

consulting HelpASisterOut Market sizing
New answer on Mar 23, 2020
4 Answers
1.4 k Views
Anonymous A asked on Mar 16, 2020

Do you have a general approach on how to tackle any market sizing question? Are there typical approaches? Do you have general tips that I can apply in case interviews in terms of market sizing questions?

Very thankful for any answer! 

Cheers!

(edited)

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Luca
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 16, 2020
BCG |NASA | SDA Bocconi & Cattolica partner | GMAT expert 780/800 score | 200+ students coached

Hello Carol,

Market sizing questions are quite hard because there are some standard approaches but you have always to adapt them to the specific case.
Generally speaking, we can mention three different approaches:

  • Top-down, that can be population based or householders based (e.g. chocolate bars or TVs sold in USA)
  • Bottom-up, where you start from a particular situation and then you scale your estimation (e.g. Gas station in your country)
  • Analytical, where you are asked to run an analysis based on "geometrical" considerations (e.g. golf balls fitting a Boeing 747)

In real cases you could also try to use more than one approach, one to obtain your estimation and the second one to do a sanity check of your result.

Feel free to text me if you want to discuss this further,
Luca

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Clara
Expert
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replied on Mar 16, 2020
McKinsey | Awarded professor at Master in Management @ IE | MBA at MIT |+180 students coached | Integrated FIT Guide aut

Hello!

Totally agree with Luca´s post.

Once you get them, market sizing exercises are actually easy, methodology is very very repetitive. However, until you reach that point, they seem scary.

The only way to get comfortable with them is actually to practice as much as possible, both theorical isolated problems -you can find plenty in this forum- and integrated market sizing exersises embebed in cases.

PM me if at a point you want a coach´s help with it, I have material for both types.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

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Antonello
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 23, 2020
McKinsey | NASA | top 10 FT MBA professor for consulting interviews | 6+ years of coaching

Hi Carol, there are 3 main approaches to solve all the market sizing questions. Happy to chat about these.

Best,
Antonello

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Francesco
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 17, 2020
#1 Coach for Sessions (4.000+) | 1.500+ 5-Star Reviews | Proven Success (➡ InterviewOffers.com) | Ex BCG | 10Y+ Coaching

Hi Carol,

there are 4 main approaches for market sizing that help to cover basically all the situations (they are not the Cosentino’s ones, which are just a bad subset of the real ones). Most people forget at least one of them in their prep. Once you know the approaches, you won’t need much prep to master them. Please feel free to PM me for more info.

Best,

Francesco

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