Cases, also known as case studies, are business problems that a candidate is presented with during a case interview at a management consultancy. The challenge is to solve it under pressure and in a structured way.
Practice With Cases on Various Topics
Popular Case Categories
Top Apparel
Our client is Top Apparel. They own a portfolio of 15 brands of fashion. Historic growth has been in line with the market and the company is making good profits. Now management wants to invest money to grow the portfolio, but they are unsure on how to prioritize investment. The client has asked us to help them determine which brands should get investments for future growth.
Central hospital
Our client, Central hospital, is a 350-bed hospital based in a medium-sized city. The company has normally seen strong financial results with a 1-4% operating gain each year for the last five years. However, this year they are projecting a $14 m operating loss and the situation is expected to worsen in the future. The CFO expects to be out of cash in 2 years if not resolved. They hired you to identify the cause of this loss and how they can hit break-even again. However, since they are an important employer, laying off staff is not an option.
Online travel booking
An online travel agency earns a 10% commission on all of its bookings. Currently, their profits before taxes are $1 m, while the industry average is around $2.5 m. The client wants to know why they're making less than the industry average?
Practice Cases with Peers That Are Currently Looking for Interview Partners.
Superfix
Our client, Superfix, is a mid-size chain of auto-service garages that has been doing well for the past ten years with 30 stores. However, since management felt that the business was saturating, they expanded with an additional 15 stores in other geographical areas. However, the expansion came with negative effects and falling profits. You're hired to figure out why the company is losing profit despite its 15-branch growth over the past few years.
Universal TV
Our client is a Canadian TV company, Universal TV. They recently entered the US market in the northeast to expand its market share and capture a large part of the 4 m consumers in a market that has little competition. However, in the past few years, Universal TV has been unable to realize a profit.You are hired to figure out why this is the case and what their next move should be.
ChemCo Foods
A chemical producer is a major manufacturer of chemical products used to preserve foods in containers. The company has seen an increase in market share, but the company has also seen a decline in profits. Our client, the CEO is worried about this trend and hires you to investigate what is going on.
Juice producer
A major juice producer sells packaged fruit juice to retail outlets. Normally, the juice is packed and sold in 16-ounce carton containers, but recently the producer added a new machine that packages the juice in 32-ounce plastic containers. So he was selling both the 16-ounce & the 32-ounce products. This allowed the business to grow 18% per year, but as sales continued to rise, profits kept falling.The producer hired us to figure out why profits are falling despite higher revenues.
Spain Shipping
Our client is a local shipping firm in Spain where they handle local shipping of packages delivered by international shipping firms like FedEx, UPS & DHL. These firms deliver packages to the key city hubs and then our client takes it from there.They want to know how many trucks they should lease to support their operations. From a cost-savings perspective they can only lease one model-type and we need to find out how many trucks the start-up needs.
SugarGums
Your client is a chewing gum manufacturer in the United Kingdom and you’re currently at the airport waiting for your flight. In the time that you have, you’re thinking about how big the annual chewing gum market is in the UK in terms of market value.
Golf balls
You’re a consultant based in Germany who is currently en route to a client in France who sells golf balls. You’re thinking about the client trying to figure out how large the market is for golf balls in France in terms of number of balls purchased each year.
Would you like to access all our cases?
Sign up now to prepare for your interview with real cases from top firms.
Bangkok motorbike
If you have ever been in Bangkok, you would have noticed these motorcycles transporting people from A to B as an alternative means of transportation. These motorcycles typically transport people on short distances such as nearby train stations, supermarkets or food stalls.Your job is to estimate how much profit a motorcycle can generate in a month’s work meaning that you have to estimate both revenue & cost to be able to estimate profit.
Sandwich place
A local sandwich place has a shop located in a busy business district. The business district is filled with large head-offices of major corporations, a train station & a university. The sandwich place only sells one type of sandwich priced at $5.00. This is a cold-cut salmon sandwich with bread, smoked salmon, salad, cheese & sauce. The sandwiches are freshly made and only prepared after the order is placed, so no pre-packaged sandwiches. The shop has 3 employees who all service customers and it is a take-away without any seating.Try to estimate the total revenue this shop can generate in one month. Costs are no factor here. Try to base your estimation on logical & reasonable assumptions that would be common for a sandwich place as described here.
Airport taxi
Dubai Airport has decided to counter the chaos in the airport taxi service by commencing a bidding process to assign airport taxi services to 3 operators only. After years of cheating passengers, black-market drivers and unlicensed cabs, the airport has had enough of the problems and is now taking action. They are retracting all existing permits and are issuing 2,100 new permits to the three largest operators in the country.Our client is a local Big-three taxi operator with a 3,000 car fleet, but he is not servicing the airport yet. He has a spare capacity of 500 taxis and he is considering applying for 500 new permits, but he doesn’t know if he will get a positive return on his investment.He asked us to help him determine if he should pursue applying for the permits or not.
Top Rated
China book publisher
Our client is a Chinese publisher called AnimeCo who is looking to publish a new book based on the popular Anime series Little Panda. This series has been highly popular in China with millions of viewers every day and the publisher is looking to capitalize on this potentially.They have asked us to provide advice on whether this will be a good investment and if they should move forward with it. They want to know the total market size, potential revenue & potential profit.
Diagnosis: Acquisition ache
Your client is part of AtoZ Ltd., a diversified multinational company with a health care division that produces medical instruments and related services. Three years ago, AtoZ expanded into health care software industry by acquiring HappyHealth SE, which is selling administrative IT systems to large hospitals in Europe. While they provide strong support systems for back-office processes, their products do not offer physician or technical support nor a patient management system. The software division has continued to disappoint in growth rates, making it hard to justify the premium AtoZ paid to acquire HappyHealth three years ago. As shareholders rally to demand solutions, the devastated Head of Operations of HappyHealth turns to you and asks for potential strategies to increase revenue.
Love thy neighbour as thyself
Your client, Port-Pouri, is a discount retailer in Portugal having 130 stores spread throughout the country and thereby being the largest player in the market. It is more profitable and has a higher market share than the closest competitor (75 stores). This competitor has recently been bought by SPARnien, the largest discount retailer in Spain, who plans to convert all 75 stores into SPARnests, the infamous stores that made the company so successful in its home turf. The CEO of Port-Pouri is worried and asks for your advice. Should she react, and if so, how?
Hospital's ill finances
A firm managing hospitals has recently been experiencing growing pains. It has contacted our firm to ask for help.
American Airlinks
Your client American Airlinks has seen its inflight revenues stagnate for the past 3 years. The CEO offers the possibility of doing a partnership with Balzac Coffee and of selling Balzac Coffee in the future, instead of handing out the current non-brand coffee for free.Advise the CEO if AA should either do this partnership or put a price on the current, non-brand coffee that is currently given out for free.
Startup VS Consulting
Your objective today is to make a decision: you have an offer from a consulting company which will pay you €50.000 per year.On the other hand, you always wanted to create your own startup in your favorite city. What would be the income difference?Please consider your income analysis and explain your decision.
Power Pills
Our client is Multifit, a producer of vitamin pills.Their primary customers are health stores and pharmacies. Right now they are considering entering the health foods and beverages market.Your task is to give them a recommendation on what they should do.
Would You Like To Discover More Cases?
Difficulty Levels
More Topics
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
We are happy to answer the most frequently asked questions.
Consulting interviews are among the most competitive and difficult job interviews that exist. Interviewers use cases as an indicator to test whether you have what it takes to become a successful consultant. In order to pass, you need to ace the case interview part. And in order to ace the case interview part, you need to be well-prepared. Thus, practicing cases is one of the most important aspects of interview preparation in consulting. During different rounds of interviews you will have to solve cases again and again to prove your structured and analytical thinking as well as your communication skills.
You can practice cases on your own and go through them to get a first feeling for the structure. Afterwards, you should go into a real interview environment and practice cases with other members on the platform. You will find more than 50 mock-interview requests on the Meeting Board every day, which you can easily accept. If there is nothing suitable on the Meeting Board, you can also use the Candidate Listing. Here you can find active members on the platform and send them a direct meeting request. If you want to take your case practice to the next level, we recommend you to schedule coaching sessions with our coaches who have many years of experience in helping candidates receive their dream job offer.
In an interviewer-led case interview, the interviewer leads through the conversation. This means that the interviewer asks specific questions and also controls the time you have to analyze and answer different questions and therefore the depth of your analysis. In contrast, the candidate-led style (which is more common) is about you taking the initiative as a candidate. The initial problem is given to you by your interviewer. Afterwards, you have the freedom to structure the case according to your ideas and to ask questions proactively in order to find a solution to the problem.
Real cases in the PrepLounge Case Library are cases that were submitted by management consultancies and have been treated as such within the company. They were made available from the real interview process. In this way, you can gain deep insights into the requirements of the case interview with the respective top consultancies (e.g. Bain & Company, Roland Berger, Deloitte, Oliver Wyman). We have marked these cases with the corresponding company logo.
Expert cases were created by our PrepLounge coaches and either contain real problems that the experts have already dealt with in their lives as consultants or cases from actual consulting interviews they took part in. They offer you an optimal preparation through the different subjects, levels of difficulty and styles. And the best thing is: If you have questions about the cases, you can ask them directly to the authors.
Video case solutions are cases in which we provide you with a solution that includes a YouTube video. With this we want to help you to understand case solutions even better.
Every member has the possibility to rate a case and leave feedback on the case. This gives you the opportunity to call up a ranking and solve the cases that are particularly popular in the community. It also gives us the opportunity to continuously improve our cases in order to provide you with the best possible practice material.
Which cases are most interesting for you depends on your personal preference and your level of knowledge. If you are just starting with the case interview preparation, beginner cases are probably the most interesting ones for you. You also have the possibility to filter by different categories, such as personal fit, market analysis or brain teaser and many more, in order to address exactly the topics that are most relevant for your application.
Practice Case Interviews - Browse Our Extensive Case Library
Invite other candidates for a meeting to crack the case interactively or solve it on your own. If you like to check your case approach just have a look at the given sample solution.
A Vast Selection of Management Consulting Cases
Our selection of case studies mirror the wide variety in real case interviews. Thus, you can solve challenging problems around market sizing, market-entry, pricing, or operations strategy. Moreover, all provided cases are marked with a level of difficulty and the respective case style. This will allow you to filter for interviewer-led (as used by McKinsey) and candidate-led cases. In addition, some of our corporate partners granted some great original cases that have been used in real interviews. Check them out to get some authentic insights about the real application process of top firms like Bain, Roland Berger, and many more. These cases are clearly indicated by the firm's logo.