15% off membership for Easter! Learn more. Close

Estimate the number of vacuum sold in the US.

Asked at Google
1.2k views
Answers (2)
crownAccess expert answers by becoming a member

You'll get access to over 3,000 product manager interview questions and answers

badge Silver PM

Assumptions

1. At least each household has one vacuum, the average life of a Vaccum is 5 years, so each household will buy a vacuum every 5 years ( Conservative number). Actual may be higher

2. Businesses have onsite housekeeping, Assuming about 6.2MM businesses in the USA across a small, medium, and large scale.

3. Because the question asked is number of vacuums, I will not focus on types of Vaccum ( Wireless/manual/etc)

Does the above assumptions looks ok?

Calculations

Personal Use/Household  - 100 MM household in the USA ( 330MM population with 3 person per household) 

1. total retail vacuums = 100MM ( assuming all households have vacuums) and the average life is 5 years, so number of vacuums sold to retail/household every year is 20MM

2. Small scale industries ( less than 500 employees), this is approximately 6MM in the USA. This is used more frequently and the average life could be lower by about 2 years. . so Vacuums sold to small scale industries is about 3MM ( assuming one Vacuums at least in a company-sized at <500 employees)

3. Medium Scale industries - MSEs are about 180K with less than 2000 employees. Assuming 2 vacuums( 1 vacuum per 1000 employees) per industry every 1 year. Total vacuum needed = 2*180K = 360K 

4. Large scale industries ( 2000+) = about 20K companies. Assuming 5 vacuums per company as about 6000 companies are huge with more than 10000 employees per govt data.  Overall 100K vacuums are required for Large scale industry each year. 

Total Vacuums = 20MM + 3 MM + 360K + 100K =. 23.5MM 

Access expert answers by becoming a member
0 likes   |  
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs
badge Gold PM
Questions:

- I am assuming we are only considering vacuum used inside and for non-professional use only, so excluding for example non-household vacuum; is that correct? - Yes

- Are we looking for the yearly number? - Yes

- I am also assuming that we are considering both iOT vacuum and "manual" ones. Do you agree with this assumption? - Yes

- Are we considering only new bought vacuum and excluding second hand market?

 

Ok, so to summarize, we are looking for the number of vacuum sold in the US for household use per year and we are including both the self-operating ones and the manual ones.

At this point, I would like to state my assumptions:

- There is at least one vacuum per household

- For simplicity, we consider that the average household size in the US is 3 people, we'll assume every household is structured in this way

- the average like of a vacuum can range between 5 and 10 years

- the vacuum lifespam changes depending on price

 

First we calculate the number of vacuum needed; as we said that there should be one per household, to calculate the household numbers we do:

300M (U.S Population) / 3 (household size) = 100M

 

Now we can also state another assumption, and we can say that the price spent on the vacuum is proportional to the household income, so household with a higher income will be buying more expensive vacuums. At the same time, it can also be safe to assume that richer household might be willing to buy a new vacuum more often to have a newer and better working model.

Do you agree with these assumptions?

- Yes

Because of this, we can assume that the frequency of purchase would be the same across household:

100M / 5 = 20 M

 

According to my calculations, around 20 millions of household vacuum are sold in the US each year.

 

Considerations:

This calculation excludes the second market but also vacuum used by house cleaners, if we assume they will be bringing their own, and vacuum used in small offices.
Access expert answers by becoming a member
0 likes   |  
1 Feedback
badge Platinum PM

Hi Ghgj,

Thank you for your answer.

It was clear and easy to follow.

There are a few things that you could improve:

  1. There are wireless and cable vacuum cleaners - usually, the cable ones serve for many years (I know people who only purchased them once, and it serves them for 20-30 years).
    However, wireless vacuum cleaners heavily rely on batteries, and I assume that they are less reliable and can serve a maximum of 4-5 years. Acknowledge that there is a trend moving toward wireless vacuum cleaners.

  2. I would say that assuming that every household owns a vacuum cleaner is too much. Aren’t there any alternatives? 

  3. Clarify whether the question is on vacuum cleaners sold only for household use because you have hotels, airplanes, restaurants, cinemas, etc.

  4. Sanity check, do you think that on average most of the people you know bought a vacuum cleaner in the last 5 years?

 

I hope it helps.

0
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs