Canback Dangel predominantly operates in four consumer-facing sectors: consumer goods, retail, cellular services and financial services.

We explore consumer goods opportunities for some of the world’s largest companies. Our experience is particularly deep in the food and beverage sub-sector, where we have conducted projects in countries as diverse as China, Germany, Brazil, and India, to name a few. The Furst food choice framework is our intellectual anchor for understanding consumer motivations during these efforts.

Beyond food, we have completed projects in small appliances, publishing, and hygiene / personal care products. By now, we have a deep understanding of demand drivers for nondurable products, codified in our demand elasticities library.

Our retail practice is an outgrowth of our work in consumer goods. Over the years, we have built a view of what it takes for retailers to succeed in international markets. Our core competence in retailing is to help make the right geographic choices: where and when to invest and with what store format.

Underlying our analyses is our retailer database that maps the retail landscape in large emerging countries. Combined with C-GIDD, it allows us to quickly see if a market is over- or under-penetrated overall or with a specific store format, both today and in the future.

Prior to founding Canback Dangel, Dr Canback spent several years consulting to cellular operators and equipment makers. Moreover, Markku Helin, who heads Canback Dangel in Southeast Asia, previously led Deloitte Consulting’s East Asia ICT practice, and our Mexico office head, Francisco Maciel, has worked for NorTel and consulted to several operators. This experience, combined with our cellular operator analysis tool form the foundation for our consulting activities in the cellular services sector.

Our core competence is assessing the future growth of cellular services in global markets. Not only at the aggregate level, but a) on a city-by-city basis for marketing and infrastructure investment decisions, b) for service mix considerations such as growth of basic (e.g., SMS) and advanced data services, and c) pricing strategies such as pre- versus post-paid revenue.

An example is our work to evaluate the future growth of the Chinese cellular services market and the potential impact of a third and fourth entrant into the market.

Finding opportunities in financial services is in many ways similar to analyzing markets for consumer goods (notwithstanding regulatory issues). Demand for individual financial products is remarkably uniform around the world, once affluence and wealth has been taken into account. Charlotte Heyden, who heads our financial services practice, has consulted to banks, insurance and other financial institutions for more than 10 years as a consultant at Bain & Co and Monitor Company.

Our work ranges from finding suitable ATM locations in Sub-Saharan Africa, to building a sophisticated model for consumer choices in retail banking in Europe based on a cube consisting of psychographic segments, distribution channel economics, and products. As in consumer goods projects, we always conduct a consumer survey as part of our consulting efforts in exploring financial services opportunities.