How to Frame a Market-Entry Case Like an MBA Consultant
The four questions that separate a structured market-entry recommendation from a guess dressed up in slides.
Most market-entry cases fall apart in the first five minutes — not because the analysis is wrong, but because the frame is. Before touching a spreadsheet, a structured answer works through four questions in order.
1. Is the market actually attractive?
Size the market top-down and bottom-up, and make the two numbers agree before you trust either one. Then look past the headline TAM: growth rate, margin structure, and concentration of existing players tell you whether this is a market worth entering at all, or one that only looks attractive from the outside.
2. Can we win here?
Attractiveness is necessary but not sufficient. List the capabilities the market rewards — distribution, brand, cost position, regulatory relationships — and score your client honestly against each one. A market can be large and growing and still be a bad idea for a specific entrant.
3. What's the entry mode?
Organic build, acquisition, partnership, or licensing each trade off speed, control, and capital differently. The right answer usually falls out of questions 1 and 2: weak capability fit plus high urgency points toward acquisition or partnership; strong fit plus patience points toward organic build.
4. What has to be true?
Close by naming the two or three assumptions that, if wrong, would flip the recommendation. This is the step most candidates skip, and it's the one that signals real judgment rather than a memorized framework.
Want a second opinion on a case you're working through? Book a session with an MBA who has run this exact framework in the room.