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Medium Growth Strategy Online Sales

Consumer Products

#Consumer Goods #Retail
ProHub Comment

This case tests whether the candidate will challenge the client's solution-focused approach and instead diagnose the underlying business problem. The key insight is recognizing that adding technical features does not necessarily address the core issue—likely poor value proposition or market positioning—and requires probing questions about customer targeting, unique selling points, and fulfillment capability.

Estimated Time 26 minutes
Difficulty Medium
Source Harvard
10 / 100
It’s Monday morning and as a new Principal/Engagement Leader, you’ve just gotten a call from a well known and respected French-based Consumer Products company. The company has offices in the US and has been selling through traditional channels throughout its history. It designs and manufactures plastic products like pens, pencils, disposable razors, etc. It’s an old company that’s been around for about 60 years and wants to take advantage of the Internet, starting with the US sales.

Clarifying Information

  1. This company now wants to sell directly to consumers through their Internet site.
  2. Their current online business is nothing more than a small catalog and is not doing very well: sales and hits are less than expected.
  3. It offers: More convenience than their other channels. It is open 24x7 and has more product information.
  4. But, limited selection: only high margin items.
  5. The President’s strategy is to add key functionality to the online business to increase the hit rate and improve revenue.
  6. She reports directly to the CEO.
  7. She wants your consulting team to create: A multi-ship-to-functionality, A site-wide search functionality, An ability to add checkout sales (e.g. impulse buy items similar to end caps in grocery stores next to the register).
  8. She wants your consulting team to build this immediately.
Mock Interview
Interviewer

It's Monday morning and as a new Principal/Engagement Leader, you've just gotten a call from a well known and respected French-based Consumer Products company. The company has offices in the US and has been selling through traditional channels throughout its history. It designs and manufactures plastic products like pens, pencils, disposable razors, etc. It's an old company that's been around for about 60 years and wants to take advantage of the Internet, starting with the US sales.

You

Thanks. Before analyzing, I'd like to clarify a few key questions...

Interviewer

Good question. Let me provide some background information...

You

Based on this, I suggest analyzing from these dimensions...

AI Score
Structure Analysis Communication Business Sense Quantitative
Practicing...
Score coming soon
Practice this case with AI Mock Interview

A French consumer products company wants to improve its underperforming US e-commerce site by adding multi-ship functionality, search, and checkout upsells. The candidate must recognize that these features alone won’t solve the real problem and should instead develop a questioning strategy to uncover the actual business issues before recommending a solution.

Key Insights:

  1. Don’t accept the client’s stated solution at face value
  2. Distinguish between symptoms (low traffic/sales) and root causes (weak value proposition)
  3. Use questioning to guide the client toward better problem definition
  4. Consider whether the issue is product/offering-related versus technical/functionality-related
  5. Test whether the online store has a compelling and differentiated value proposition