Hi
@futuretraineesolicitor and
@vacschemeapss - my apologies for the delayed response and thank you for your patience. I've been on a short break from TCLA over the past few weeks.
First let me re-clarify what I meant by tying pros and cons into broader themes.
My approach to these case studies was always to focus on answering the question first. Since the central question is "Which company would you choose", organising the structure of my answer based on my overall reasons/justifications for choosing the company made more sense to me.
I think it would be very difficult to provide you with a meaningful example without having to write a full blown case study scenario but I've tried anyway. The example that follows is obviously very simplistic but I hope it illustrates the point anyway.
So let's say Company A is an established market player, has strong financials, and their product has great customer loyalty. They are currently expanding outside the UK where they are based. Where else Company B, is a new entrant and haven't actually been able to turn a profit. Their product is being hailed as highly innovative but they lack the funds to scale up production. Company A have seen a decline in sales lately as consumers shift to purchasing Company B's product.
Again, it's a very bare bones example but there are two approaches you could take. You could separate the competition issue from the financial issue from the operational issue (i.e. the difficulty in scaling vs the expansion to other markets).
Or you could consider the issues together and think about your argument/reason/justification for picking a company. If I was picking Company B I'd probably discuss all three issues under the theme/justification "Growth potential" or something to that effect. When I expand on why I think Company B has a stronger growth potential (pros: innovative, consumer preference for their product), I'd be justifying why we should still choose Company B despite the cons too (cons: yet to turn a profit, scaling production - I'd maybe argue that both these issues seem resolvable through the influx of cash an acquisition would provide and the expertise our client could bring on scaling up etc.). I would then also frame an argument against Company A by arguing that despite stronger financial returns, they could see problems down the line from continuing declining sales. Choosing to expand off the strength of one product while there are already shifts in consumer preference to a competitor also means they may never recover the sunk costs from aggressive international expansion etc.
I hope that somewhat illustrates what I'm talking about. Obviously an actual case study will have way more complex issues and completely different kinds of issues for each company, but that's why connecting the dots into wider justifications/reasons for your choice becomes more important. You want to discuss the core issues but the point is to provide a balanced answer to the client based on pros and cons from both companies. My approach was generally to provide that answer by comparing the companies as I went along while explaining my choice in relation to the overall justifications/reasons/themes in favour of the company.
I keep stressing that this was just my approach because evidently you can choose to approach/structure your answer any way you want. I preferred doing it this way because I felt it more clearly demonstrated my reasoning and the extra analysis and thinking time taken to compare different issues vs just descriptively listing and talking through each pro and con for both companies.
I hope that helps!
