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October 1 - November 19, 2019
Sample Questions How would you design a bookcase for children? How would you design an oven for people in a wheelchair? Google Maps is launching a version for schools. How would you design this?
Interviewers are looking for candidates who will do the following: Structure a problem: Even seemingly open-ended questions can, and should be, broken down into components. Your
market can be segmented and your strategy can be divided. Find a way to tackle a problem in a structured way. Show strong instincts: We rarely have all the data we’d like, and we don’t know what the future will hold. A good PM should be able to make good business decisions, even in the absence of exhaustive data. Drive, Not Ride: You might not be the CEO of the product, but you are a leader.
Show this by driving the interview forward. Be relatively exhaustive in your response to a question – discuss the benefits and tradeoffs, the short-term and long-term benefits, etc. – and back up your answers with reasons. Don’t go overboard, though. If you find your interviewer is asking many follow-up questions and you’re only gi...
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if you’re concerned you’re going into too much detail, ask your interviewer if ...
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Useful Frameworks
Customer Purchase Decision Making Process
most common are AIDA and REAN. AIDA models customer decisions as Attention (or Awareness) -> Interest -> Desire -> Action. Attention: You need to get the customer’s attention somehow. A snappy email heading, perhaps? A snazzy ad? Or maybe a mention from a trusted friend or website?
Interest: Now that you have the customer’s attention, you need to get them interested in your offering. What are the advantages or benefits of your product? Desire: With the customer’s interest piqued, you need to convince the customer that they want your product. Action: Finally, with the customer desiring your product, they take action to purchase the product.
REAN expands this to add on post-purchase behavior. Reach: The customer is aware of your product. Engage: The customer is engaged and considering your product. Activate: The customer takes action to pu...
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The point is to understand purchase behavior as a cycle wherein the customer must first be aware of your product, then they have to evaluate it against their needs and competitors’ offerings, and then they finally purchase it.
Marketing Mix (4 Ps)
SWOT Analysis
The Five Cs (Situational Analysis)
Porter’s 5 Forces
Make Your Own Framework If you think a lot of these frameworks sound sort of the same, you’re not alone. They do overlap. Here’s a way to see the differences: Customer Purchase Decision Making Process helps us understand the buying
process and gives us an “entry point” for boosting sales. Marketing Mix (4 Ps) describes the different aspects of a company’s marketing plan. SWOT Analysis offers a framework for analyzing a strategic decision. Five Cs (Situational Analysis) gives an overview of the environment around a product or company. Porter’s 5 Forces describes what an industry
as a whole looks like. Use these frameworks as a starting point to analyze a problem and to signal key aspects you might otherwise miss, such as the value of...
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Product Metrics
Types of Metrics Depending on your goals, you can break down the types of metrics in a variety of ways. We’ve divided them into user acquisition, activity, conversion & retention, and money.
Usability Testing: This generally won’t give you true metrics, but it can help you understand the why. Why are customers leaving your site at a certain point? Customer Feedback: Feedback can
come in from social networks, customer support pages, or surveys. Like usability testing, this will generally be more powerful in offer context to understand metrics than in gathering numbers. Traffic Analysis: Tools such as Google Analytics can help companies understand how users are interacting with the website. Internal Logs: Logging information directly can help a company understand
user behavior at a deeper level than simple traffic analysis. A/B Testing: A/B Testing can help a company understand the impact of a particular change by comparing the behavior of users who have a feature to those who don’t. While it is an incredibly useful tool, it can also be misapplied. For example, rolling out a...
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Strategy Questions Strategy questions include asking what a company’s strategy is or how to design a strategy. It’s important to think about a product’s strategy at two levels:
Micro: What is the business model for the product? What steps is the company pursuing to succeed on that model? Will customers want it? Macro: How does this product fit into the greater vision of the company? Will it open up new opportunities? Does it secure an existing market?
Note how the candidate has structured her answer. She’s broken down the acquisition into its components, and then blended in some aspects of a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, and threats. This is one way the earlier frameworks might be applied. She then wrapped up her response with a clear, succinct conclusion. Sample Questions
Describe the strategy behind Google entering the cell phone market. Amazon has a number of independent websites that, in some ways, duplicate the functionality of Amazon: Zappos (shoes and clothing); Diapers.com (baby and kid needs); YoYo.com (kids’ toys); Look.com (kids’ clothing);
Soap.com (toiletries); Casa.com (house products). What do you think their strategy is in maintaining so many different websites with such similar functionality? Do you agree or disagree with it? If you were Amazon, would you launch service in India? Why or why not? How would you do this? Amazon has ads on its website for
products you can buy on other websites. What do you think is the strategy there? Is it a good idea? Do you think Apple should sell non-Apple products in its stores? Why or why not? If you were responsible for Microsoft phones, what would you do...
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If you were CEO of Yahoo!, what would your strategy be? Imagine you’re starting up a new social networking service. What would your strategy be? Imagine you were considering launching two services which have similar re...
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Sample Questions What is a product you think is marketed well? How would you improve it? How would you market Gmail in China?
How would you market the Android tablet? What do you think of Google’s marketing for its social products? How would you improve it? How would you market the next version of Windows? How would you choose a market for expansion for Amazon Web Services?
Discuss how you think Whole Foods is currently marketed. What works well? What could they do better? How would you market a mobile app to track weight, calorie consumption, and exercise? How would you market...
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magazine subscription service...
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Some of the possible launch activities are depicted in the below figure2.
Sample Questions Describe a product you think had a successful launch. Why? Describe a product you think launched poorly, despite being a good product. What would you
have done differently? How would you launch the Google Self-Driving Car? Suppose Yahoo were to build a phone. How would you launch this? How would you launch an electronics store for Amazon.com? Google is considering a version of Google Docs designed for large enterprises.
How would you manage this launch? You’re working for a company that helps people create better online ads. How do you launch this product? You have built a superior water bottle: it keeps drinks hot and cool, it’s stur...
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You have developed a car that takes a different type of fuel. This new fuel source is very cheap, but works as well as standard fuel. How would you launch this car? How would...
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Sample Questions Suppose you’re a manufacturer of paper clips and have realized people no longer need paper clips. How else could you market your paper clips? Name as many uses as you can for a
wine glass. Name some ways you could integrate Amazon products/services into a car. Imagine you had access to an enormous database that transcribed all speech everywhere in the world. As soon as someone says something, it is automatically transcribed and put into the database.
It is also trivially fast to query anything. What products or services could you build with this database? How could you integrate internet into a gym? What products or services could you create or improve? If you were th...
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You are working at Apple and instructed to launch a product that is not technical. What ideas can you come up with? You are suddenly given a very large (1000+) number of old desktop computers with old CRT monitors. What could y...
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Sample Questions Describe a product or service you think takes an interesting approach to pricing. You are launching a new music service where you pay per time you play a song. After a certain number of plays, it automatically
purchases the song. How would you price this service? Imagine United Airlines has decided to launch a new “standby membership pass,” which allows members to take unlimited free flights on standby (only boarding if there are empty seats). How would you price this membership? A textbook publishing company
has decided to sell subscriptions to electronic versions of any of its books. How would you determine the price of this service? How would you price a file backup service targeted at enterprise customers? Two stores are located just a mile aw...
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product for 25% more than the other. What factors could explain why the prices are different? How would you price a cell phone service for the elderly? You are launching a photo printing service that automatically prints and mails someon...
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Imagine you are launching a to-do list manager for smartphones. How would you determine the pricing of this application? What analysis would you go through to determine if/when...
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You notice the advertising revenue
on your website has dropped considerably. How would you go about figuring out why that has happened? You compare traffic from this month to last month and discover that this month’s traffic is 10% lower. What would you do? A magazine company comes to you for help. They understand publishing
