Cell Phones

Case Study Prompt

Your client is a cell phone carrier in Western Europe and growth is exploding. The market is approximately 60% penetrated.  

Your client is concerned because acquisitions costs (the cost to acquire a new customer) have been increasing at a 20% CAGR over the past few years.

Your client wants to know why costs are increasing and what they should do.

Case Study Overview

In this cell phone company case study, you’ve been called in to solve a mystery. Your client is experiencing explosive growth, but the cost of acquiring new customers has risen without explanation. Your task is to dig into the cost structure of your client and find the answers to their questions. With those answers, develop the plan to turn their profits around.

The Profitability Framework will help you solve this case study, but we highly recommend not relying too heavily on the framework. Take the framework, what you know about profitability, and your business experience to develop a solution specific to this situation.

This case has no math diagrams. The qualitative difficulty is 2 out of 4. You could expect to see this case in a Roland Berger first round interview.

Roland Berger Interview Pointers

Roland Berger looks for candidates with strong critical thinking skills and an ability to think on their feet. They tend to focus more on technical details than the strategy behind them.

In this case, let them see that you are confident working with technical details.

In this company case study, make it a point to find 1 or 2 key takeaways or areas you can improve.

Book an hour of out-loud practice with an ex-MBB coach.