Simon-Kucher Practice Cases: 9 Worked Pricing Examples (2026)

Simon-Kucher cases are pricing cases. The firm's own interview workshop deck says a case takes about 20 to 30 minutes and usually adapts real client work in simpler form, and the one full case it walks through is about setting the launch price of a smartphone. The second published example, a cruise operator choosing a route segment and a price, comes from the same pricing playbook: customer segments, willingness to pay, elasticity and a hard capacity constraint. Learn to work those two cold and the other seven examples below are variations on the same moves.

This page is the examples, not the process. It works nine pricing cases with the math shown: Simon-Kucher's two published cases, four pricing cases from the Road to Offer library, and three practice cases built for one skill each and labelled as constructed. For rounds, the numerical test and who interviews you, use the Simon-Kucher case interview guide. For the generic pricing method, see pricing strategy cases.

Simon-Kucher practice cases at a glance

How a Simon-Kucher case works: it is a 20 to 30 minute pricing problem in which you ask for the data, calculate profit or revenue for each option and recommend one price. The firm publishes no round count and says nothing about a written case, so rounds and the numerical test are covered in the guide, not here.

The deck is dated April 2015, so read it as the firm's format guidance, not as a current rulebook, and treat your own invitation as the final word.

Start free now: MedSuite Technologies Hospital Software Pricing is a McKinsey-style pricing case: a healthcare IT startup with a new hospital records platform must set an annual subscription price to maximize first-year revenue. It has 8 questions, 3 with math, 2 exhibits, and a median of 20 minutes across 18 completed voice runs. An AI interviewer runs it out loud, shows each exhibit when you reach it and scores the debrief. Your first full case is free when you create an account; the worked excerpt below runs its price comparison. A free account also gets one full run in every simulator inside the app: one complete run of each of our four McKinsey Solve practice formats (Red Rock, Sea Wolf, SFL Classic and SFL Island), a full Casey-style case, a full CCA-style diagnostic and a complete Bain SOVA-style diagnostic.

Road to Offer offers one complete free run in each of four Solve practice formats: Red Rock's full Study and six Cases on a 35-minute advisory clock, all three Sea Wolf sites on a 30-minute Simulation clock, all 13 SFL Classic decisions without a countdown, and SFL Island onboarding plus three project days on a 30-minute Simulation clock. Start without an account; create a free account to finish and keep your score, point breakdown and worked feedback on each submitted decision. Worked visuals include highlighted calculations and charts in Red Rock, constraint and treatment visuals in Sea Wolf, decision and dependency diagrams in Classic, and evidence chains, placement maps and team feedback in Island. No payment is required for those first runs or their worked reviews. Learning mode is paid: the matching game pack, Solve pack or qualifying Annual access includes its step-by-step coaching and feedback, untimed in the clocked games. The free Solve plan asks your invitation length and test date, then gives dated practice steps for up to 28 days; a free account is needed to view and save it.

Case (style, industry)	Quant difficulty	Qualitative difficulty	The math you run	Median time
MedSuite Technologies Hospital Software Pricing (McKinsey, hospital software). 8 (3 with math), 2 exhibits.hospital softwareQuant difficulty mediumQualitative difficulty medium20 min· 18 voice runsTry free	medium	medium	Revenue at each price point, tiered pricing	20 min18 voice runs20 min, 18 voice runs	Try free
City Bike Share Concession (McKinsey, urban transport). 9 (4 with math), 3 exhibits.urban transportQuant difficulty hardQualitative difficulty medium32 min· 11 voice runsTry free	hard	medium	Revenue by zone, 15-year concession value	32 min11 voice runs32 min, 11 voice runs	Try free
PeakFit Omnichannel Growth Plan (BCG, fitness). 8 (4 with math), 4 exhibits.fitnessQuant difficulty hardQualitative difficulty medium16 min· 16 voice runsTry free	hard	medium	Membership mix, studio ramp, EBITDA bridge	16 min16 voice runs16 min, 16 voice runs	Try free
Cake or Break (Deloitte, bakery retail). 8 (1 with math), 2 exhibits.bakery retailQuant difficulty mediumQualitative difficulty mediumFewer than 10 runsTry free	medium	medium	Gross margin by product and size	Fewer than 10 runsFewer than 10 runs	Try free

One is adapted from a consulting club casebook (Duke Fuqua); the rest were written for Road to Offer. The library has no case in Simon-Kucher's own style, so these are matched by case type to what Simon-Kucher asks: price setting, fares by zone, membership tiers and margin by price point. None is Simon-Kucher's own material. Lux Rides and Events.com, worked below, are library pricing cases too; they sit outside the table only because it lists the cases graded for difficulty. PeakFit (membership tiers) and Cake or Break (margin by size) are not worked on this page; use them as the next reps after the nine below. More are in the case library, 92 cases in all. Every debrief scores seven categories: structure (25% of the score), quantitative analysis (20%), business judgment (15%), and problem understanding, exhibit reading, communication and synthesis (10% each), with feedback on every question. Median times come from completed runs between June 25 and September 22, 2026, and count runs, not people.

Which nine cases are on this page, and what does each one train?

Nine cases, each built around one pricing decision and one calculation you must be able to do under pressure. Numbers 1 and 2 are Simon-Kucher's; 3 to 6 run on library cases; 7 to 9 are constructed for practice.

Use the same loop on every case: state the objective, build a value-first structure, ask for the one number that decides it, calculate profit not revenue, and close with a price and a risk. The pricing strategy cases guide covers the general method; the sections below are the Simon-Kucher flavoured reps.

What three things set the price in a Simon-Kucher style case?

Cost sets the floor, what the customer will pay sets the target, and competitors show where you can sit relative to the alternatives. The CasesCoach Simon-Kucher pricing guide (August 2026, reported, not from the firm) frames pricing around these three. Simon-Kucher's own value-based pricing page says cost-plus pricing can leave money on the table and treats competitor prices as an input alongside customer value.

Case 1: Simon-Kucher's own smartphone pricing case, decoded

The answer is $600, and the trap is revenue. This is the full sample case in the firm's case interview workshop deck (April 2015), set in 2010. The numbers below are the deck's; the walk-through is a summary in our words, so open the deck to see the original slides.

The prompt. A pricing executive at a large electronics maker wants a quick walk-through of how you would set the launch price of a feature-rich new phone, handset only. The deck then splits the case into parts.

Part 1: what information would you want? The deck lists the topics it hopes you raise and says the part tests business sense, creativity and pricing knowledge. Group them into three buckets so you do not recite a list:

1. Goal and context. What the pricing strategy is for (profit, share, penetration), where the product is in its lifecycle, and whether it is a launch to build a base or to harvest.
2. Value and willingness to pay. What customers get versus competing products and services, how willingness to pay differs across customers, and whether the price can be structured (upfront, rebates, recurring charges) to capture those differences.
3. Economics. Costs, other revenue streams such as downloads or accessories, and cannibalization of the company's own products.

Say the bucket names out loud before the detail. The firm's deck says explaining your plan early lets the interviewer guide you if you are off track.

Part 2: set the price. The interviewer then shares a willingness-to-pay study: a fifth of prospects top out at $800, two fifths at $600 and the remaining two fifths at $400. You ask for cost and get a variable cost of $300 with no fixed cost. The deck notes that market size does not change the answer, so pick 100 buyers.

The deck's own version shows the same ranking as $100, $180 and $100 per unit of market. The deck flags two traps: missing that a lower price also wins everyone who would have paid more, and optimising revenue instead of profit. Revenue per 100 buyers would be $16,000 at $800, $36,000 at $600 and $40,000 at $400, so a revenue-minded candidate picks $400 and gives away $8,000 of profit.

A strong candidate also mentions segmentation and product versions before the interviewer closes that door. The deck expects the interviewer to explain that this case needs a single price. State the single-price answer, then add one idea about how to capture more.

Part 3: the recommendation. The deck's model answer is to charge $600 as the profit-optimal single price, and to launch at $800 and reduce to $600 later if the price can change over time. You can test that second line yourself. Selling to the top 20% at $800 earns 20 x $500 = $10,000, and then cutting to $600 sells to the next 40% for 40 x $300 = $12,000, so $22,000 against $18,000 for a flat $600. That arithmetic assumes the $800 buyers do not wait for the cut and ignores the timing of the cut, so say that out loud as the risk.

Part 4: the bonus question. A few months after launch at $600, the company wants to drop the price to $450. How much would volume have to rise to keep profit the same? The margin per phone falls from $300 to $150, so volume must double. The sanity check the deck asks for is the more valuable half: at $600 volume is already 60% of the market, and doubling it means 120%, which is impossible. Look at the willingness-to-pay split too. The 40% group tops out at $400, so a price of $450 attracts no new buyers at all, and you would halve the margin for nothing. The only cut that opens new buyers is $400, which gives the $10,000 profit above, well under $18,000.

A close that works: "Hold $600. It earns about $18,000 per 100 prospects against $10,000 at either alternative, and a cut to $450 would need double the volume with no customers to supply it. If we can change price over time, launch higher and step down."

Case 2: the Simon-Kucher cruise case on PrepLounge, decoded

The answer is the Explorer segment on a 7-day trip at €161.50 a day, worth about €58.2 million a year. PrepLounge hosts a case supplied by Simon-Kucher, labelled candidate-led and intermediate, with the firm's solution outline. The exhibits (the survey and the elasticity tables) sit behind images on that page and may need a free PrepLounge account, so this section summarizes the logic and the arithmetic the page states and leaves the source data to the original.

The prompt. German Sea Tours, an international cruise operator selling 5 to 24 day trips, has seen revenue growth slow over five years. The board wants to know whether the market slowed or the company is underperforming, and what to do about it. The case has four phases.

Phase 1: market versus company. Compare the company's revenue growth with the market's over the same five years. The page's outline finds the market grew faster, and market share fell from 18.75% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2019, so the problem is the company, not the market. You do not need a precise growth rate, only the comparison.

Phase 2: where it loses. A customer survey compares the company with competitors on purchase criteria. The company trails on ticket price, onboard leisure, travel agency capability, and food and drink. Customers weigh the last two less, so the case narrows to ticket price and onboard leisure, and the chief commercial officer later asks you to put price first.

Phase 3A: which segment and trip length. A new ship holds 990 passengers and must stay at least 81.8% full, which is 810 passengers a trip. A ship sails at most 365 days a year, rounded down to whole cruises. The company's initial plan is a 12-day trip at €150 a day for Frequent Travelers, with demand of 900. The alternative is a 7-day trip at €170 a day for Explorers, also 900.

The shorter trip wins because it fits 52 sailings into the year against 30, even though each trip earns less. That is the hidden multiplier in the case: trips a year. The outline rejects mixing 7 and 12 day trips as operationally infeasible.

Phase 3B: tune the price with elasticity. Elasticity is the percentage change in volume divided by the percentage change in price. When demand is inelastic (below 1 in absolute value), raise the price; when it is elastic (above 1), cut it. The figures in the outline imply an elasticity of about -0.5 for Frequent Travelers and -2 for Explorers, and the logic of the two answers is opposite.

• Frequent Travelers (inelastic). Raise the price until demand falls to the 810 floor: from €150 to €180, a 20% rise, with demand down from 900 to 810, a 10% fall. Check: -10% / +20% = -0.5. Revenue is €180 x 12 x 810 x 30 = €52,488,000.
• Explorers (elastic). Cut the price until demand fills the ship: from €170 to €161.50, a 5% cut, with demand up from 900 to 990, a 10% rise. Check: +10% / -5% = -2. Revenue is €161.50 x 7 x 990 x 52 = €58,198,140.

The Explorer plan is about €9.6M a year above the initial €48.6M plan, and about €5.7M above the best Frequent Traveler version. The Explorer price cut also points back to Phase 2: the company was at a price disadvantage.

Phase 4: the recommendation. The page asks for a top-down message in five sentences or fewer. A version that fits: "Launch the 7-day Explorer route at €161.50 a day. The company is losing share because its price is too high, not because the market is slow. At 990 passengers and 52 sailings it earns about €58 million a year, €9.6 million more than the 12-day plan. Risks are whether Explorer demand holds at the survey elasticity and whether onboard spending follows ticket revenue. Next step: test the price on a few sailings." The outline itself flags dynamic pricing by capacity and onboard spend as strong extras.

The percentage and elasticity steps are where candidates slip under time pressure. Drill them until the sign and the size come out before you reach for a pen.

Case 3: worked excerpt, pricing hospital software in MedSuite

This excerpt runs the price comparison of MedSuite Technologies Hospital Software Pricing from the table above, with the numbers from its own exhibits. Decide what to charge before you read the table.

The prompt. MedSuite is a healthcare IT startup with a new cloud electronic health records platform for US hospitals. It needs the right annual subscription price to maximize revenue in its first year of launch. How should it price the product?

Clarifying questions that matter. Does first-year revenue mean annual contract value or cash recognised in the year? How does willingness to pay differ by hospital size? What does it cost to serve a hospital, and how long is the sales cycle? The case answers: about 5,800 US hospitals, a sales cycle of 6 to 12 months, a variable cost of about $30K a hospital a year and $15M of fixed costs, and a CEO who is open to tiers but prefers one price in year one.

A structure that works. Three parts: who can buy at each price (demand by hospital size), where competitors sit on price and features (positioning), and what MedSuite can realistically sell in year one (conversion, timing, capacity). The first part is pure arithmetic and is the one the exhibit gives you.

The math. Exhibit 1 counts the hospitals whose maximum willingness to pay reaches each listed price. Revenue potential is price times that count. Each row is an alternative scenario, so never add the rows together.

The best single price is $150K. Raising it to $200K loses 1,400 small hospitals and $60M of annual potential. At an equal 10% penetration, $150K means 440 customers and $66M a year against 300 customers and $60M at $200K.

Now compare tiers. Take the best listed price for each segment, large hospitals at $350K, medium at $200K and small at $150K, using the segment counts behind the exhibit.

That is $890M against $660M for one price, about 35% more, before any change in conversion or the cost of selling three prices.

What a strong answer says. "I would launch at $150K as the best single price, because it maximizes annual revenue potential at $660M and keeps the CEO's one-price simplicity. A size-based menu is worth $890M on paper, so I would test it rather than wait a year, but the case gives me no conversion, renewal or capacity data, so I would validate those before committing. Competitors price from $100K to over $500K and MedSuite matches Epic and Cerner on features, so the price positions it as a full-feature alternative at a fraction of their cost." One extension the case allows: at 10% penetration and the $30K variable cost, 440 customers at $150K contribute 440 x $120K = $52.8M, against $15M of fixed costs. Say that is a check on viability, not the stated objective, which is revenue.

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Cases 4 to 6: three more pricing cases from the library

These three are shorter walk-throughs. Each is a Road to Offer library case, not a Simon-Kucher case, chosen because it forces one pricing skill. The numbers come from each case's own exhibits.

Case 4: Lux Rides, a launch price with no benchmark

The prompt. Lux Rides, an Italian two-wheeler brand, is launching Model Z, a luxury scooter made in Italy, in Vietnam. What price maximizes revenue in the first two years? Vietnam has many lower-end players and no direct luxury scooter benchmark, and the client needs a margin of at least 10% on the selling price.

Step 1: the floor. Exhibit A gives component costs of 7.3, 13.2 and 3.5 million dong from Spain, Italy and Vietnam. Components total 24. Shipping is 12.5% of that, 3. A 20% tariff applies only to the imported Spain and Italy parts: 20% x (7.3 + 13.2) = 4.1. Landed cost is 24 + 3 + 4.1 = 31.1 million. A 10% margin on price means price = 31.1 / 0.9 = 34.56 million. Any price below that fails the client's constraint.

Step 2: the demand read. The willingness-to-pay survey gives the share of high net worth buyers who would buy a scooter at each price. Revenue index is price times that share.

The highest index, 10.0 at 20 million, is below landed cost, a trap that rewards the candidate who calculates the floor first. Among prices that clear it, 40 million wins at 9.6. The margin there is (40 - 31.1) / 40 = 22.25%.

Recommendation and the honest caveat. Test a launch price of about 40 million dong. Flag that the survey is not a smooth demand curve: the purchase rate at 40 (24%) is above the rate at 30 (20%), which an interviewer may well probe. The right answer is that survey noise or a prestige effect could explain it, that it is a reason to test nearby prices, and that the survey is not a sales forecast. Add the competitor risk, a local rival launching a luxury model, and name the defence as design, service and distribution rather than a price war.

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Case 5: Events.com, when volume grows and revenue does not

The prompt. A private equity firm bought Events.com, a registration and ticketing platform for US endurance events, which earns a fee per transaction. Market share doubled since 2015 but revenue is flat and profit is down over two years. Diagnose the cause and fix it.

The diagnosis, from the exhibits. Revenue was flat at $39.9M in 2017 and 2018 while operating income fell from $17.6M to $13.5M. The cost that moved was payment processing, from $8.0M to $11.9M.

The processor did not get more expensive: its rate held at 2.0%. The mix changed. Registrations were flat, but premium events lifted the average price from about $50 to about $75, so dollars processed rose 49%. Costs followed the dollars, while revenue did not.

The root cause is the fee design. The old fee was a flat 10% of every transaction. Exhibit C shows the new structure: $3.00 under $50 and $5.50 over $50. On a $75 registration the $5.50 fee is 7.3%, not 10%, and the higher the price the smaller the share (the old and new fees match at $30 and $55). As the mix shifted up, the take rate fell from 10.0% to 6.7%.

The fix and its size. Add a 2.25% variable fee on registrations over $50. The interviewer gives about $375M of volume in that tier, so 2.25% x $375M is about $8.4M of added revenue. Profit rises by the same amount only if the added cost is zero; otherwise subtract it. The risk is customer reaction, so roll out gradually and watch churn among large events. The case notes customer surveys show little loss from the extra fee.

The general lesson for Simon-Kucher style cases: a price built on a fixed amount per unit does not follow value when the mix moves up. The test is whether revenue scales with what the customer values and what you pay to deliver it.

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Case 6: City Bike Share, what drives revenue per ride

The prompt. Austin is selling a 15-year concession on its 5,000-station bike share to a private operator. The operator keeps all revenue, and the case asks what the concession is worth as a basis for a bid. For a pricing reader, the revenue build is the interesting half: flat fares by zone, with very different usage.

Revenue by zone. Stations x rides a day x fare x 365 days:

Downtown is 10% of stations and 38.6% of revenue (21.9 / 56.67). A high fare, high use zone is where a pricing change matters most and where a competitor would attack. Recurring costs are $40M a year and setup is $100M, so the base operation leaves about $16.7M a year before the concession fee, or about $150M over 15 years undiscounted after setup. That is a ceiling, not a bid: discount it for time and risk. The case's illustrative 10% rate gives about $26.8M of base value, which is why the debrief warns against bidding on undiscounted totals.

The pricing angle to volunteer. Fares are fixed by zone in the case. The exhibit lists surge pricing (+$8M), advertising (+$5M) and monthly subscriptions (+$4M), but fixed zone pricing conflicts with surge permission, so check what the concession allows before counting it. A quick price test for zone C: raising its fare 10% adds $1.4M if volume holds, and a revenue-only break-even is a volume loss of 10 / 110, about 9.1%, so the zone is worth raising only if riders are not that price sensitive.

Cases 7 to 9: three constructed pricing cases

These three are built for one skill each. Every number is a case assumption written for practice, not a figure about a real company, and none is Simon-Kucher's own material.

Case 7: a 5% price rise at an industrial distributor

The prompt. A distributor of industrial fasteners has $400M of revenue and variable costs of 75% of revenue, so a 25% contribution margin, and $70M of fixed costs. Operating profit is $30M. The CEO wants to raise all list prices by 5%. Should it?

The structure. Do not start with "will customers accept it". Start with the break-even: how much volume can you lose before the price rise stops paying? Then compare it with the volume you expect to lose.

The math. A 5% price rise raises each unit's margin from 25 to 30 points of the old price, a 20% increase. To keep contribution flat, volume can fall by the share that cancels it:

break-even volume loss = price rise / (contribution margin + price rise) = 5 / (25 + 5) = 16.7%

Now translate elasticity into profit. Contribution today is $400M x 25% = $100M.

Take the -2 row: revenue is $400M x 1.05 x 0.90 = $378M, variable cost falls with volume to $300M x 0.90 = $270M, contribution is $108M, and with $70M of fixed cost profit is $38M, up $8M. The price rise only fails if elasticity is worse than about -3.3 (16.7% / 5%).

Recommendation. Raise the price, because the 16.7% break-even loss is larger than the 10% loss an elasticity of -2 implies, and verify elasticity by customer group before rolling out. Protect the customers with no alternative supplier first. Risk: a small group of large accounts may carry most of the volume loss, so stage the rise by segment.

Run the arithmetic as a set of timed reps until the formula comes without notes.

Case 8: good, better, best tiers for three segments

The prompt. A collaboration software company has 1,000 prospective accounts in three segments and sells one plan at one price. Marketing has measured what each segment would pay a month for three feature levels. Design a three-tier menu and compare it with the best single price.

Variable cost a month is $5 for Basic, $10 for Plus and $25 for Pro.

The single-price baseline. Sell Plus only. At $35 all 1,000 accounts buy and profit is 1,000 x $25 = $25,000. At $80 only Teams and Enterprise buy, so profit is 500 x $70 = $35,000. At $90 only Enterprise buys: 200 x $80 = $16,000. The best single Plus price is $80, with profit of $35,000 a month (selling Pro alone at $200 to Enterprise ties it). It leaves 500 solo users unserved.

The tier menu. Choose prices so each segment picks its own tier. Try Basic $30, Plus $65, Pro $150 and check each segment's surplus, which is its willingness to pay minus the price:

Solo buys Basic (assume a customer buys at zero surplus), Teams buys Plus and Enterprise buys Pro. Profit a month:

That is $19,000 above the single price, about 54% more. The gain comes from serving the solo users and from charging Enterprise far more than Teams, which one price cannot do.

What to say about the limits. Prices have room: Pro could rise to $174 before Enterprise prefers Plus (200 - 174 = 26 against 25), and Plus could rise to $69 before Teams prefers Basic. Leave a cushion, because willingness to pay is an estimate, and Simon-Kucher's own value-based pricing page lists surveys, conjoint analysis and pricing experiments as ways to measure it. Name the real-world risk too: if feature gaps between tiers are too small, buyers trade down and the menu earns less than the model says.

For a library case on raising spend per order with a premium add-on, try this one next.

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Case 9: discount leakage in a chemicals business

The prompt. A specialty chemicals producer sells 100,000 tons a year at a list price of $1,000 a ton. Variable cost is $600 a ton. It sells to four customer groups, and discounts differ widely. Which customers earn their discount?

Each group's price leakage is the sum of an on-invoice discount, a year-end rebate and freight allowances, as a share of list price. What the company keeps is the pocket price.

Total pocket revenue is 20,000 x $890 + 40,000 x $820 + 25,000 x $740 + 15,000 x $640 = $17.8M + $32.8M + $18.5M + $9.6M = $78.7M, an average leakage of 21.3% on $100M of list revenue. Total contribution is $5.8M + $8.8M + $3.5M + $0.6M = $18.7M.

The read. Group D has the deepest discount and the thinnest margin: $40 a ton, or 6.3% of its pocket price. It is also the smallest group by volume. The question that decides it is whether D's discount buys something, such as larger orders, a long contract or a strategic account.

The test. Suppose D's on-invoice discount drops from 28% to 22%, which is $60 a ton. Contribution a ton rises from $40 to $100. D now earns $0.6M today and needs only 6,000 tons at $100 to match it, which is 40% of its current volume. So the company can lose up to 60% of D's volume and break even. At a 20% loss, 12,000 tons x $100 = $1.2M, up $0.6M, or 3.2% of total contribution.

Recommendation. Narrow D's discount in steps, starting with accounts that have no volume commitment, and keep it where D is a strategic account. Track price realization (pocket price over list) by customer from now on. Simon-Kucher's page on value-based pricing says prices should be adjusted over time and recommends tracking price realization, which is the habit this case is rehearsing.

The waterfall from list price to pocket price is a chart you will be asked to read quickly. Practise pulling the number that matters off an exhibit.

Bonus case: how do you grow revenue 15% when volume is flat?

Three 5% steps do it: raise list price, tighten discounts and shift mix to a premium version. They compound to 15.8%. This prompt shape shows up in Google's AI Overview for "Simon-Kucher pricing case" (checked November 5, 2026). It is not a published Simon-Kucher case, so every number below is built for practice.

The prompt. A manufacturer sells 1,000,000 units a year and volume is flat. The CEO wants 15% more revenue through price and commercial levers, with no extra units.

Given: units 1,000,000, flat; target +15%. Case assumptions: list price $100; average discount 20% (invoice discounts plus rebates), so the realized price is $80 and revenue is $80M; a premium version sells at 1.5 times the standard realized price; variable cost is $50 a unit for standard and $65 for premium.

The structure. With units fixed, revenue is realized price times 1,000,000, and realized price = list x (1 - discount) x mix. The target is $92M, so realized price must reach $92.

Step 3 is 0.9 x $88.20 + 0.1 x $132.30 = $79.38 + $13.23 = $92.61. Each step is a 5% lift (0.84 / 0.80 = 1.05 for discounts, 1 + 0.1 x 0.5 = 1.05 for mix), so 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05 = 1.1576: $92.61M, $0.61M above target.

Profit check. Variable cost per unit is 0.9 x $50 + 0.1 x $65 = $51.50. Contribution rises from $30.00 to $41.11 a unit, so from $30.0M to $41.1M, up 37%. Price gains drop through because units and most costs do not change.

Sensitivity. Ask what happens if a lever lands short.

Recommendation. "The plan reaches $92.6M, but only 0.7% of volume can leave before it misses +15%, so the revenue target is thin. Profit is not: contribution stays above today's until volume falls by 27% (30 / 41.11 = 73% of units). I would start with discount discipline on accounts with no volume commitment, test the list rise by segment, and ask whether 15% revenue or profit is the real goal."

What are the common mistakes in a Simon-Kucher style pricing case?

The costly ones are naming a price too early, optimizing revenue over profit and skipping a sensitivity check. Sources are marked.

• Naming a price before you have the logic. MBB Prep's Simon-Kucher guide (June 2026, reported) calls this, and defaulting to cost-plus, the most common mistake. Ask about the objective, cost and customers first.
• Optimizing revenue over profit. The firm's workshop deck lists calculating revenue instead of profit, and not asking for cost, as traps. In Case 1, revenue picks $400 and gives up $8,000 of profit.
• Skipping the sensitivity check. Your base case rests on estimates. MBB Prep suggests testing it after the base case; the bonus case above shows a 15.8% plan falling to 13.0% when one lever lands at half.
• Pricing from cost alone. Cost is the floor, not the answer; see the three pillars above.
• Losing the objective in the detail. The deck also lists disregarding the initial question and getting bogged down in details. Restate the goal before the recommendation.

Are Simon-Kucher's published client case studies useful for interview prep?

They are useful for vocabulary and for your "why Simon-Kucher" answer, not as practice cases. Searchers often type "Simon-Kucher case study", and two different things match: a client project summary on the firm's website and the case you solve in an interview.

The firm's value-based pricing page (checked November 5, 2026) states that its projects raise clients' profitability by an average of 100 to 500 basis points, and describes client results such as a return on sales gain of 2.5% for a maintenance, repair and operations provider and 3.2% for a satellite service provider. Treat these as the firm's own claims, not independent evidence. The page also names the tools the firm uses to measure willingness to pay: surveys, focus groups, conjoint analysis and pricing experiments. Quote one of those methods, tied to a sector you care about, in your motivation answer. The Simon-Kucher behavioral interview questions guide has the wording, and the firm's careers page says that being well prepared and yourself gives the best chance.

How should you use these nine cases?

Do not read them twice. Work each one as a rep, then turn the miss into a drill.

For more worked material in other formats, the case interview examples hub collects them, and L.E.K. and Deloitte have practice pages of their own. For how Simon-Kucher compares with other firms, see types of consulting firms. The firm and its recruiting route are covered in Simon-Kucher consulting, the Simon-Kucher internship guide and the Simon-Kucher salary breakdown.

Turn this guide into a Simon-Kucher plan

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1

Learn the format

15 steps

• Learn how to caseGuided learning · 35 min
• The Case Interview MethodLesson · 8 min
• Profitability & Turnaround: AfrihealSkill drill · 5 min
• Profitability & Turnaround: Berty BankSkill drill · 5 min

Sources and further reading (checked November 5, 2026)

• Simon-Kucher case interview workshop deck (Frankfurt office, April 2015): case length, what is evaluated, and the full smartphone pricing sample case, read in full November 5, 2026
• Simon-Kucher: Careers: process varies by country; skills assessed with case studies or other exercises
• Simon-Kucher: Industries: industries served and service areas
• Simon-Kucher: Who we are: firm size and focus on pricing and commercial growth
• Simon-Kucher: Value-based pricing: willingness-to-pay methods, 100 to 500 basis points average profitability gain, client examples
• Simon-Kucher: Cracking the case workshop, Stellenbosch University: the firm runs case interview workshops with two example cases (August 2025 event)
• PrepLounge: Simon-Kucher case, GST Cruise Company: company case provided by Simon-Kucher, with solution outline
• PrepLounge: Simon-Kucher case, Unlocking Revenue at AlpenGlide: a second Simon-Kucher company case listed by PrepLounge; its full text was not opened for this page
• CasesCoach: Simon-Kucher pricing interview guide (August 2026, third party): the cost floor, willingness to pay and competitor benchmark framing, reported
• MBB Prep: Simon-Kucher case interview (June 2026, third party): reported mistakes such as naming a price too early and defaulting to cost-plus
• Road to Offer case library: MedSuite Technologies, Lux Rides Vietnam Pricing, Events.com and City Bike Share Concession, using each case's own exhibits and debrief notes
• The process, rounds and numerical test are covered in the Simon-Kucher case interview guide, which cites candidate reports from Hacking the Case Interview and Glassdoor