How and what would you keep in a stall at station? List top 10 things you will keep in it and their position on stall?

Woah, so many questions already pondering over my head, i can’t even keep a count. But remember the calm, you can’t risk giving away your structure by splurging your curiosity and asking questions all over the place.

So let’s start —

At first what exactly does this question Looks to you? A marker entry type? An RCA? A product design? Try taking a guess and validate at the end :)

Let’s open the account, what’s your first question? Mine would start from the components of the sentence itself. Always try to strike off all the ambiguous terms in the sentence first. For this case

What would you keep in a *stall* at *station*

1. What kind of station? — Bus station, railways etc
2. What kind of stall — movable, fixed etc

Once you are done clarifying the terms, move on to the next set of questions which mainly comes from what, where, how and why (we already did the “what” part)

So Where and Why

Where -

1. Which station? How is station located inside the city? (Centrally, outskirts Etc)
2. Where is the stall primarily located in station — (inside, outside, near gate etc)

Now there can be temptation to narrow scope even further by asking more questions around — where exactly the stall stands- in-front of AC coaches/Non-AC coaches, towards the end platform/start of the platform Etc. But these questions aren’t exactly the kind of questions you should be asking here. Primary reason — PM cases are generally open ended and interview expects you to call out these questions and not specifically ask them. It would be a huge add on if you can just call them out while solutioning. Unlike consulting cases where narrowing the scope becomes the primary objective. But calling them out is super important. Let’s take this case for example — depending on where the stall stands (in-front of AC coaches or General coaches) the content and stock of stall can vary. Right? Targeting can go for a toss if you try to sell English novel in-front of general coach.

How?

How includes — How the person at stall is selling those item — going to seats of respective people, going to coaches and selling from outside, or standing at the stall and selling

Again I feel the “How” aspect will be more useful if you call them out yourself.

Next set — What is the prime of objective of stall owner?

Let’s say the prime objective here is to sell as many things as possible.

Now we have all the relevant information to set our hypothesis and drive the objective by strategising contents and stating assumptions. For this question lets take the following assumption and details -

1. The stall is movable
2. Stall is located at platform no. 2/3 in a medium sized railway junction
3. The stall person sells items by standing at the stall and does not have any assistant, manages everything by himself.

Given the objective/goal of the stall owner, we have to select location and items such that their sale volume is high.

Here is the time you take front seat in your interview and drive interview ahead.

Taking couple of mins, I come up with following points -

1. I am keeping low ticket size items like water bottles, biscuit etc on my stalls.
2. I am taking up a place in front of sleeper coaches since influx of people will be high there.
3. I am keeping my location at an optimum distance from entry gate to platform, but not too far away from it.

My Top 10 things and their position will be as follows. (Numbers not in order)

1. Biscuits — A very promising candidate for high volume selling item in railway station. I will be placing biscuits higher up at stalls where it is visible to both children and adults as it is likely to be consumed by both.
2. Lots of people forget to bring toothbrush in train. They won’t proactively search for toothbrush but if we can just place it along other eateries and at a place it is optimally visible, this can be a good compliment purchase.
3. Toothpaste can be a good cross-sell with toothbrushes.
4. Adults and teens crush heavily on namkeen during travel. The choice of position can be such that it is possible from a long distance and easily recognisable.
5. A thing that goes well with namkeen and meal is cold drinks. It is an obvious choice for a stall product and can be placed somewhere below or at a low visibility place since customers would anyway ask for it after observing different close synergetic products like biscuits and namkeen.
6. Locks can Na good addition to items, few people will always come and ask for locks since locks are not specifically sold somewhere in railway station apart from that moving man who carries lock with him.
7. Soaps and sanitizers are again high frequency selling items but can be kept at a lower visibility level since not everyone will going to buy it.
8. This is a test product. I feel there will be hidden demand of this product in railway station and hence keeping it in my stall. This is a test product and can be replaced with some other thing if it does not get any traction.
9. Chips — Favourite among teens and children, this is again bought very frequently. The placing should be such that children are able to recognise instantly and can even touch and feel (before they become impatient and start pulling them away)
10. Breads are a quick stomach filler and can be purchased frequently by travellers and other moving sellers who use bread frequently in their meal.

A further extension to this can be evaluating metrics and substitute items, also we haven’t used the fact that its a movable vehicle and we can have different position depending on the time of the day. But I guess that’s enough to warm up the product grey cells in brains.

This case is written keeping in mind the Indian problem context in mind, cases available on internet and other books lack relevant Indian context.

I work at an e-comm company which deals the domestic problem and Indian mindset. Challenges faced by tier 3 and beyond are totally different than what you practice from popular casebooks and video interviews.