This article focuses on how to conclude well in your case interview. It is part 2 of a 3 part series. If you haven’t read part 1 yet, what I would do is pause reading and look at the following link, which covers four great tips on how to improve your conclusion.
What I’m going to do in this post is to give two examples of conclusions to the same case interview: one okay conclusion and one great conclusion.
Okay Conclusion
“The question we’re trying to answer is whether our client should enter the European market for dental floss and we’ve done a bunch of analysis throughout the case. Here’s what we found:
- The market for dental floss in Europe is quite large, it’s at $400M annually already.
- The market seems to be growing so that looks quite attractive for the client.
- Also, we noted that since the client has ancillary products that are already in the same market, they’ve got a lot of the key relationships with retailers and distributors already worked out and operated, so that seems like a big benefit.
- Finally, we’ve looked at some of the other markets in which the client operates against similar competitors that already exist in the European market. Considering market shares and market fragmentation, our client seems to successfully compete in those other markets, which bodes well.
- It seems the client should be able to successfully compete against the same competitors in this market.
So my overall recommendation is that the client should move forward and enter the European dental floss market given that the market is quite large, given that they have some of the key retail and distributor relationships already worked out, and given that they have been able to compete against similar or even the same set of competitors in other markets today”.
Great Conclusion
“The key question we’re trying to answer today is should our client enter the European market for dental floss. After all the analysis we’ve done my recommendation is that they should move forward and enter the European market for three key reasons:
- First, we calculated that the overall market is quite large at $400M annually, it’s growing at 10% and expect to continue that trajectory for at least the next decade. The client has a hurdle of making $25M in revenue at least within three years of entering the market, but it seems quite feasible for them to achieve at least a 6% market share given some of the other considerations all mentioned.
- Second, we investigated this market and found that the client is already operating successfully with ancillary products, which means that many retail and distribution relationships are already in place. For a market entry this is a really important advantage because they won’t have to spend any time building those relationships, which is a big benefit toward their goal of getting to $25M in three years. They’ll be starting with a big leg up.
- Third and the final reason is that we looked at the competitive landscape in this market and discovered that the competitors in the European market are very similar to those that they already compete with in other markets around the world. Moreover, in those markets our client currently holds 13-19% market share, so it seems that their marketing strategy in terms of marketing, advertising and brand positioning is successful and that they’d likely be able to replicate that in the European market as well. This would allow them to achieve well more than the 6% market share that they need to hit their $25M revenue hurdle.
The only thing I did want to call out as a caveat is that there have been some recent reports in the U.S. around the efficacy of dental floss, which argues dental floss isn’t as highly recommended as in the past. So, I think we should at least check this out. It’d be a good next step for the team to look into what impact this has had on U.S. sales. I don’t think it would have a drastic impact, and if I’m right about that it wouldn’t change our recommendation, but it’s worth doing that due diligence.
Given all the information we have at the moment, my recommendation is that the client move forward.”
Wrapping Up
In part 3, we’ll analyze the difference between the two conclusions and specifically look at the four great tips mentioned in part 1 and how they really make a big difference to concluding well in your case interview.
Jason Oh is a management consulting professional at Novantas, specialized in financial services strategy consulting. He holds experience helping Fortune 500 financial institutions with commercial due diligence, go-to-market strategy, and distribution channel strategy. He’s also an avid traveller with passion for FinTech, marathon, and blogging.
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