ssCase Questions
Case questions are most commonly used in consulting interviews, but they can be used in other
situations, such as in interviews for marketing positions with consumer goods companies. Simply
put, a case interview is the analysis of a business question. Unlike most other interview questions,
it is an interactive process. Your interviewer will present you with a business problem and ask you
for your opinion. Your job is to ask the interviewer logical questions that will permit you to make
a detailed recommendation. The majority of case interviewers don't have a specific answer that
you, the candidate, are expected to give. What the interviewer is looking for is a thought process
that is at once analytical and creative. Here's a sample case question:
You are advising a credit card company that wants to market a prepaid phone card to its
customers. Is this a good idea?
You: What is the role of our company? Do we simply market the card or must we create them
ourselves?
Interviewer: This card will be co-marketed with an outside phone company. We don't need to
perform telecommunications functions.
You: What are our expenses connected with the card?
Interviewer: We must pay 15 cents for every minute we sell. We also have to pay $1.00 as a start-
up cost for the card and card systems.
You: What are our marketing expenses?
Interviewer: We normally use slips of paper that are attached to the backs of our credit card
payment envelopes. We sometimes also send customers a direct mailing - in a separate envelope.
Or we can have telemarketers call selected customers.
You: What's the cost of each of these marketing techniques, and what is their response rate?
Interviewer: Telemarketers have a 2 percent response rate, and cost $1.00 per call. Direct mailings
cost us 40 cents per mailing and have a 0.50 percent rate of response. Our payment attachments
have a 0.25 rate of response, but only cost us 5 cents each.
You: I'm going to assume we will sell one-hour phone cards. That will cost us $9.00 for the
minutes and a dollar per card - so each card costs us $10.
Interviewer: That sounds reasonable.
You: And what is our expected revenue on a one-hour phone card? What is the current market rate
for a 60-minute phone card?