Home Goods Retailer

Case Study Prompt

The client is a mall-based retailer of home goods. It owns about 500 stores throughout the US. Both sales and profits declined over the last 3 years or so but had grown steadily prior to that point.

There are three segments in the home goods market: discount stores (e.g. Target), specialty stores (e.g. Bed, Bath, and Beyond), and other stores.

The market has grown over the last 3 years, with discount and specialty segments growing and “other” segment (the client fell into this category) declining. Our client did somewhat better than its segment, but worse than the overall market.

With the drop in sales and profits they have hired you to find the root causes and come up with solutions to improve the situation.

What would you investigate to solve this problem?

Case Interview Overview

In this business case interview, the client is a home goods retailer in the US. The company has seen sales and profits decline in the last 3 years. You’ve been hired to rectify the problem and reverse the decline.

Use the Profitability Framework to solve the business problem in the case, but don’t restrict yourself to the basic frameworks. The best casers blend frameworks and their own business acumen to create a custom framework fitted to the case.

With a qualitative difficulty score of 2/4, this business case interview is a case you could expect to be given in a first round at Bain. There are a few math diagrams to interpret.

Interview Tips: Bain

Bain is looking for practicality in its case interview candidates. The firm wants to see how you would react to and navigate complex business problems on the job. Are able to take a step back from the case and into the real world?

In this case, keep the real-world application in mind when creating your structure – would it translate to a real-world environment?

To make the most of your business case interview practice, seek out one takeaway or area you can improve upon.

Need help with your interview preparation? Book an hour with an expert coach.