Market Attractiveness 2026: Access Is the Fifth Test

Market attractiveness is a composite, and its author said so

The best known scoring model for this is the nine box grid built for General Electric, and McKinsey still publishes a page about it, dated 1 September 2008, checked 30 September 2026 at mckinsey.com.

The page states the two factors it judges on: "the company can judge a unit by two factors that will determine whether it's going to do well in the future: the attractiveness of the relevant industry and the unit’s competitive strength within that industry". Attractiveness is half of the model, and ability to win is the other half.

It also states the prescriptions: "With units above the diagonal, a company may pursue strategies of investment and growth; those along the diagonal may be candidates for selective investment; those below the diagonal might be best sold, liquidated, or run purely for cash."

Then the caution that most attractiveness checklists drop: "Sorting units into these three categories is an essential starting point for the analysis, but judgment is required to weigh the trade-offs involved." And an example of what that judgment looks like: "For example, a strong unit in a weak industry is in a very different situation than a weak unit in a highly attractive industry."

The page adds that "The criteria for assessing industry attractiveness and competitive strength have grown more sophisticated over the years", without publishing them. Our research file records that absence, along with the fact that no weights are given. Any scored attractiveness grid you see carries somebody's weights, and it is worth knowing whose.

A pharmacy case interview that misses the bar by about a week

Oliver Wyman publishes a case in which a supermarket owner considers opening a pharmacy in one corner of the store, checked 30 September 2026 at oliverwyman.com. The hurdle is stated in the prompt: the client "is tight on capital and requires a payback period of two years or less".

The firm publishes four calculation lines and all four recompute. "Number of store customers per month * percentage of US population that takes prescription drugs = 10,000 * 66% = 6,600 potential pharmacy customers per month". Then "6,600 * $100 = $660,000 pharmacy revenues per month". Then "25% * $660,000 = $165,000 in pharmacy profits per month". Then "$4,000,000 / $165,000 monthly profit = approximately 24 months".

Do the last division exactly. 4,000,000 over 165,000 is 24.2424 months, which rounds to 24.24. The firm announces its own rounding with the word approximately, so the arithmetic is regular. On the stated hurdle of 24 months or less, though, 24.24 months sits past the limit by 0.24 of a month, which is about seven days.

The firm's own reading is that "this investment just falls within the desired payback period window. Additional information will be needed to make a recommendation." We publish both readings and leave the firm's sentence as written. The candidate's job is to notice that the result lands on the boundary, and to say which side of it and by how much.

One percent, or 67 customers a month

A result on the boundary is more useful than a comfortable one, because it can be converted into something the client can go and get.

To pay back in exactly 24 months, monthly profit has to be 4,000,000 over 24, which is 166,667 dollars, rounded to the nearest dollar. The shortfall against 165,000 dollars is 1,667 dollars a month, and 1,667 over 165,000 is 1.01 percent.

Now put that in customers. Each pharmacy customer brings 100 dollars of revenue at a 25 percent margin, so 25 dollars of profit a month. The shortfall of 1,667 dollars divided by 25 dollars is 66.7 customers, which we carry as 67 people.

Sixty seven extra customers a month, against 6,600, is the whole gap. That is the sentence a partner remembers, and it converts an attractiveness score into a recruitment target for the pharmacy counter.

The sensitivity works in the other direction too. If the local prescription rate runs five points below the national 66 percent, customers fall to 61 percent of 10,000, which is 6,100, and monthly profit falls to 6,100 times 25 dollars, so 152,500 dollars. Payback becomes 4,000,000 over 152,500, which is 26.23 months. A five point difference in one assumed rate moves payback by about two months, and the case says explicitly that no local statistic exists.

Three readings of one incremental line

The same case has a third question about the pharmacy's effect on grocery sales, and it is worth working carefully because the published answer's label and its number describe different quantities.

The published data point is that "Another supermarket that recently opened a pharmacy reported that overall supermarket sales (excluding drugs) went up by 10%." Average grocery spend per customer is 10,000,000 dollars over 10,000 customers, so 1,000 dollars a month. The store's overall profit margin is given as 5 percent.

By hand. 6,600 customers at 1,000 dollars is 6,600,000 dollars; with a ten percent uplift that is 7,260,000 dollars, and 5 percent of 7,260,000 dollars is 363,000 dollars. The uplift alone is ten percent of 6,600,000 dollars, which is 660,000 dollars, and 5 percent of 660,000 dollars is 33,000 dollars. Ten percent of the store's 10,000,000 dollars of sales is 1,000,000 dollars, and 5 percent of 1,000,000 dollars is 50,000 dollars.

The published answer computes 6,600 times 1,000 times 1.10 and labels the result incremental sales, then multiplies a rounded 7.5 million dollars by 5 percent to reach 375,000 dollars of monthly profit. The multiplication of 7,500,000 by 5 percent does give 375,000, and the rounding from 7.26 million is announced in the page as being for ease of math. What the figure measures is a total rather than an increment, and the three readings above differ by a factor of eleven at the profit line.

We do not choose between them on the firm's behalf. The transferable habit is our own rule: check that the sentence attached to a number says what the number shows, which is how both of the errors that reached us from outside readers were found.

Access, the market attractiveness test that fails large markets

Now the fifth criterion, and this case contains it in two published figures.

The town has 50,000 people. At the national 66 percent rate, 33,000 of them take prescription drugs, which is the market. The store sees 10,000 visitors a month, of whom 6,600 are candidates. So the client can reach 6,600 over 33,000 of the market, which is 20 percent.

The other 80 percent is behind three incumbent pharmacies and a shopping habit. The case says the three rivals "all serve the same types of prescription drugs", so there is no product reason to switch, and the client's only reachable pool is the traffic already walking past the corner.

That ratio is what attractiveness checklists miss. The market is stable, the margin is 25 percent, the town is not shrinking, and none of that matters beyond the 20 percent the client can touch. A large, growing, profitable market that requires a channel the client does not own is unattractive to that client, however it scores in the abstract.

Three notes on scoring, before the branch is written.

1. Weight access on its own line. Leaving it inside competitive intensity hides it, and it is the criterion that reverses entries.
2. State the hurdle before you compute anything. Oliver Wyman's page asks candidates to "Show your client why it's better than the alternatives", checked 30 September 2026 at oliverwyman.com, and a hurdle is what makes that comparison possible.
3. Treat share based scores with care. BCG's 2014 study found that "market share is no longer a direct predictor of sustained performance", checked 30 September 2026 at bcg.com.

The full entry structure this branch feeds is in the market entry framework. The portfolio grid whose axis that study examined is in the growth share matrix, and the payback arithmetic itself in ROI and payback.

What an unhurdled branch costs

The dimensions and weights below belong to us and come from src/lib/grading. Firms publish criteria; a weighted scoring scheme is not something any of them makes public.