Why waffle market is soaring?

Notice:
1.Please refer the original case description and analysis in the "Vault Guide to the Case Interview, p 63".
2. All right reserved by Joe Hao.

Situation: A client came to the you (consultant) to ask the reason of a significant jump of their waffle sales in the last two quarters.

My initial brain storm:
Based on my common sense, food market seems not to be the one which may have unexpected jump or down, but there are still some exceptions in my mind:
Q1. If the the waffle market is weather depended, i.e. is eating more waffles in a extreme hot or cold weather counts a possibility?
Q2. Did this company have M&A actions in the last months?
Q3. Did the waffle industry change significantly, i.e. is there any waffle company get bankrupted or give up their waffle business?
Q4. Did our client enter any new markets which contributed significantly?
Q5. Does eating waffle become a fashion?
Q6. Is there any natural disaster in the next quarters and people regrate food in case. (OK, I know this reason is probably good for waffle, but I may suitable for food like water. )
Q7. Did they change they promotion strategy, for example, if do they let Michal Jackson to be their spokesman. (This may works 20 years ago...)
Q8. How about price?
Q9. Did they change the component of their waffle?
Q10. Did the client make a strategic change of their marketing or sales (Well, this question is a little big and vague, but I think it would be a good question to be start with)?

Ok, above unfixed issues are just part of all issues which can effect the sales. Someone may argue my "crazy common sense - food market is a relatively steady-going market". Well, I would say, most market are affected by these factors, however, how much these factors can affect is the point. I will not break down this issue this time. I just randomly list the staffs in my mind, of course, in a really messy order. I will try to break the situation down using a more formal and professional way.

Analytic Tool:
Four Ps model (Price, position/place, product, promotion) is a analytic tool to analyze the marketing of products/services, so it would be a appropriate for this case.

Because I can not impersonate the interviewer, I just simply list my questions according to the 4Ps model. You can find the problem and the then suggest according.

A. Position (Usually from a big point of view, analyze the market as a whole)
1. Has the overall market grown recently?
2. Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4
3. Did the sales of other breakfast foods of our own breakfast products increase as well?(Yeah, it may happen with a big possibility that the sales jump of waffle are triggered by some other products, for example, people may found some ice cream tastes fantastic with waffle...)
4. How about other waffle companies' sale performance? Did they also have a sales jump?
5. Is there any political policy for the waffle market

B. Promotion
I believe just simply ask the interviewer if the client change their promotion strategy in any way.
Of course, you can specify like this:
1. Has company promoted other related products?
2. Are there some famous person who declare their favor of our waffle?
3. Did we starte to put our ads on popular TV programs?
4. Did we change our ads?
...
My immature understanding of promotion analysis is: promotion generally has two points:
(1). Impress the current customers by prices, quality, unique feature etc.
(2). Develop new market and new customers.

C. Price
1. Has our client lowered prices recently?
2. Have other waffle manufacturers raised their price?
3. Have we raised price?

D. Product
1. Did we change the raw material suppliers?
2. Did the suppliers change their offering staff?
3. Did we change the recipe of our waffle, is the ingredient the same?
4. Did we still use the same assembly line?
5. Did the waffle's shape, taste, color, texture change?

Well, hopefully this helps.

Joe Hao