case library / competitive dynamics and pricing
Continental Parcel: The Customer Becoming a Competitor
A medium competitive dynamics and pricing case, candidate-led, built for live practice with an AI interviewer that grades like a coach.
- Competitive relationship
- candidate-led
- medium
- ~35 min
- 3 exhibits
Our client, Continental Parcel Service (CPS), is a national parcel carrier. Its single largest customer is Vantage, a giant online retailer that generates $12 billion in annual revenue for CPS by shipping roughly 1 billion parcels a year through CPS's network. At the same time, Vantage has been quietly building its own in-house delivery fleet, capacity that today handles a growing share of Vantage's own parcel volume instead of routing it through CPS. The CEO of CPS wants to know: should we be doing MORE, LESS, or the SAME amount of business with Vantage? There is no hard target set, the CEO wants your reasoning and a recommendation.
What happens when you run it live
Your interviewer holds answers to 5 clarifying questions candidates usually ask, so opening the case correctly gets rewarded. The case unfolds over 6 phases, with 3 exhibits handed to you at the right moments. You structure, do the math out loud, and close with a recommendation. Then you get a graded report across structure, quant, insight, synthesis, and communication, with the specific moments that cost you points. The exhibits, numbers, and answer key stay inside the live session, the way a real interviewer keeps the case packet on their side of the table.
How to approach a competitive dynamics and pricing case
These cases start with someone else's move: a rival cuts price, a new entrant shows up, a tariff lands. The question is how to respond, and the trap is answering before you understand the attacker's economics and your own. Contribution margin does most of the real work in pricing decisions: what does each unit actually earn, and where is the walk-away line.
Interviewers listen for game-thinking without game-theory jargon: what does the competitor want, what can they sustain, which responses escalate versus contain. The best answers weigh matching, differentiating, and not responding at all, and pick one with a clear trigger for changing course.
Run Continental Parcel: The Customer Becoming a Competitor live, free. About 35 minutes, graded in the same sitting.
Start practicing freefree · no card · graded in minutes