Case interview examples › Market entry
Market entry case interviews
A client wants to enter a new country, customer segment or product category. You decide whether it should, and if so how.
How a market entry case runs
The question is a yes or no with conditions attached. Interviewers want three things covered: is the market attractive, can this client win in it, and does the move pay back. You are usually asked to size the market early, often from scratch, and then handed data on competitors, customers or costs.
The recommendation says how to enter as well as whether. Build, buy, partner or license, and how big a first step? A conditional yes, such as “enter through a distributor, and only if we can reach 8% share by year three”, scores better than a bare yes.
A structure to start from
Should the client enter?
- The market
- Size and growth
- Profit pool and margins
- Customer segments and needs
- Can we win?
- Competitors and their share
- The client’s advantage
- Barriers: regulation, distribution, brand
- The economics
- Entry cost and timing
- Share and revenue we can expect
- Payback and risk
- How to enter
- Build
- Buy
- Partner or license
Tailor it to the brief. A pharmaceutical launch turns on regulation and reimbursement; a coffee chain abroad turns on sites and local tastes; a software company moving into a new segment turns on what the product lacks for those buyers. Put the branch that decides the case first.
The maths it tests
- Market size, top down or bottom up
- Population × share who buy × purchases a year × price, or units × price from the supply side. State each assumption as you make it.
- Revenue = market size × expected share
- Be modest about share in the early years. New entrants rarely match the leaders.
- Payback = investment ÷ annual profit
- Compare it with what the client asks of other projects, if the brief says.
- Contribution after entry costs
- Include the cost of winning customers, not only the cost of serving them.
Where candidates lose marks
- Sizing the market without saying the assumptions out loud, so the interviewer cannot follow or correct them.
- Assuming competitors will not respond to a new entrant.
- Recommending entry without saying how: build, buy or partner, and on what scale.
- Forgetting the client’s own capacity. An attractive market is no use to a firm that cannot serve it.
Market entry cases to practise
- Nightingale Prep Foundation Nightingale Prep is considering entering the UK market with preparation courses for the nursing regulator's overseas-qualifying exam.
- TimberCrest Ventures Foundation TimberCrest Ventures is weighing entry into the German coffin market — decide whether the opportunity justifies the move.
- GojiHarvest Biotech Intermediate Goji Harvest Biotech is considering introducing its new fruit fertilizer to the Chinese agricultural market — is the opportunity real, and is it profitable?
- Brightleaf Solar Intermediate Brightleaf Solar, a US community solar developer and operator, must decide whether to enter the newly opened Michigan community solar market, how much capacity to pursue, and through which mode of entry.
- Verdant Containers Intermediate Verdant Containers builds hydroponic container farms and must decide whether to enter the fresh-produce market as an operator running its own farms, and if so against which customer.
- Summit Reach Intermediate Summit Reach, an indoor climbing-gym operator, must build the launch plan for its new climbing gym.
- Stellar Frontier Advanced Stellar Frontier discusses the opportunity for an aerospace firm to enter the space tourism market.
- Luma Therapeutics Advanced Luma Therapeutics, a US digital health company, must plan the launch of its FDA-cleared prescription digital therapeutic (PDT) for chronic insomnia.
Other case types
Every case in the library