Working off Kevin’s hints, Alice is able to determine why the gross margin changes and identifies a factor that can offset the decline in margins.
By examining KO’s fixed cost structure, Kevin helps Alice understand the difference in strategies for companies with different cost structures.
Using a set of graphs, Alice is able to correctly determine the strategies preferred by KO and the bottlers.
Alice rapidly arrives at the solution. Though, the lesson from this case is to have a logical sequence of analyses leading up to the final answer, and moving rapidly to insights.