Consulting frameworks for case interviews
Six frameworks every case candidate should know cold. Each page covers definition, when to use it, when to skip it, a worked example, and the mistakes that flag a candidate as junior.
Industry analysis
Porter's Five Forces
Porter's Five Forces is a framework for judging how attractive an industry is by analyzing five competitive forces: rivalry among existing competitors, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of suppliers, and bargaining power of buyers.
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Marketing
The 4Ps (Marketing Mix)
The 4Ps is a marketing framework that decomposes a product offering into four levers: Product (what is being sold), Price (how much), Place (where and how it reaches the customer), and Promotion (how it is communicated). It is the default starting point for marketing, go-to-market, and product launch cases.
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Strategy
The 3Cs
The 3Cs is a strategic framework that decomposes any business situation into three lenses: Customer (who they are, what they want), Company (capabilities, economics, brand), and Competitor (who else is in the market and how they are positioned). It is the fastest way to structure most strategy and market-entry cases.
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Operations
Value Chain Analysis
The Value Chain is a framework that breaks a company's activities into primary activities (inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing & sales, service) and support activities (firm infrastructure, HR, technology, procurement) to identify where value is created and captured.
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Organization
McKinsey 7S Framework
The McKinsey 7S framework is an organizational analysis tool that examines seven internal elements (Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared values, Skills, Style, Staff) and how aligned they are with each other. It is used to diagnose whether an organization can execute its strategy.
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Case math
Profitability Tree
A profitability tree is a structured decomposition of a company's profit into its underlying drivers: Profit = Revenue minus Costs, then breaking each side until you reach a driver concrete enough to act on. It is the default framework for profitability and cost-out case interviews.
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