How to Build Business Acumen for Consulting Interviews as a Master’s Student

Business acumen for case interviews is the ability to understand how companies make money, compete, serve customers, and make commercial decisions. For Master’s students, building strong business knowledge for case interviews can be especially important if your academic background has not included finance, strategy, or economics. You do not need to memorize hundreds of industries, but you should be able to recognize common revenue drivers, cost structures, customer behaviors, and competitive dynamics. In this article, we will explore how Master’s students can build business acumen, strengthen commercial judgment, and apply that knowledge effectively during consulting case interviews.

TL;DR - What You Need to Know

Business acumen for case interviews helps Master’s students understand business models, identify commercial drivers, and make stronger case recommendations.

• Business knowledge for case interviews should cover revenue, costs, profitability, customers, competition, pricing, and market dynamics.
• Master’s students can build commercial awareness through company analysis, business reading, case practice, and structured reflection.
• Strong candidates apply commercial knowledge to hypotheses, calculations, exhibits, tradeoffs, and client recommendations.
• Business judgment improves through repeated practice with profitability, pricing, market entry, customer, and competitive decisions.
• Progress becomes visible when you identify key drivers faster, interpret evidence clearly, and make commercially realistic recommendations.

What Is Business Acumen for Case Interviews?

Business acumen for case interviews is the ability to understand how a business operates, identify the commercial factors driving performance, and use that understanding to make sound recommendations. It combines knowledge of business models, customers, competition, revenue, costs, and market dynamics with the judgment needed to apply those concepts to an unfamiliar case.

In a consulting interview, business acumen is not about knowing every industry or memorizing large amounts of business terminology. It is about understanding the commercial logic behind a problem and using that logic to guide your analysis.

For example, if a company's profits are declining, someone with strong business acumen for case interviews would not immediately rely on a memorized profitability framework. Instead, you would think about what could realistically be changing in that specific business.

You might consider:

• Whether customer demand has decreased
• Whether prices have changed
• Whether the company is selling a different product mix
• Whether variable costs have increased
• Whether fixed costs have grown
• Whether competitors have changed their pricing or market position
• Whether customer behavior has shifted

This type of reasoning demonstrates business judgment in case interviews because you are connecting the numbers to the underlying business situation.

Business acumen also helps you understand business models. You should be able to determine who the customer is, what the company sells, how it generates revenue, what its major costs are, and what factors determine profitability.

For example, a subscription business may depend heavily on customer acquisition, recurring revenue, retention, and pricing. A manufacturer may depend more heavily on production volume, capacity utilization, input costs, distribution, and product margins.

The goal is not to memorize these examples. The goal is to develop enough commercial awareness for consulting that you can identify the most relevant drivers when you encounter a new company or industry.

This is also where business intuition becomes useful. As you analyze more companies and cases, you begin to recognize common relationships between customers, revenue drivers, cost structures, competitive dynamics, and strategic decisions.

Strong business knowledge for case interviews therefore has three components:

• Knowledge: You understand fundamental business concepts such as revenue, costs, margins, customers, competition, and business models.
• Application: You can select the concepts that matter for the specific case instead of applying every concept you know.
• Judgment: You can interpret the analysis and explain what the findings mean for the client's decision.

A candidate may calculate the correct answer but still provide a weak recommendation if they cannot explain its commercial significance. Conversely, strong commercial thinking helps you move from a calculation or exhibit insight to a practical business implication.

For Master’s students, this distinction is important. Your academic training may give you strong analytical and structured problem solving skills, but case interviews also require you to connect analysis with realistic business decisions.

Business acumen is therefore best viewed as applied commercial understanding. It helps you move beyond frameworks and calculations and explain why something is happening, what it means for the company, and what the client should consider doing next.

What Business Knowledge Do Master’s Students Need?

Business knowledge for case interviews should focus on the commercial fundamentals that explain how a company creates value, earns revenue, manages costs, competes, and serves customers. Master’s students do not need deep expertise in every industry, but they should understand the core business concepts that appear repeatedly across consulting cases.

The most important starting point is understanding business models. You should be able to explain what a company sells, who pays for it, how revenue is generated, and which activities drive costs.

A useful way to assess any business is to ask:

• Who are the customers?
• What product or service is being sold?
• How does the company make money?
• What are the main revenue drivers?
• What are the largest fixed and variable costs?
• What determines profit margins?
• What alternatives do customers have?
• What factors influence demand?

Revenue drivers are especially important because they help you break growth into measurable components. Depending on the business, revenue may depend on price, sales volume, number of customers, purchase frequency, utilization, subscriptions, or product mix.

Cost structure is equally important. You should understand the distinction between fixed costs and variable costs and be able to identify which costs are likely to change when sales volume, production, or business activity changes.

Profitability connects these two areas. At a basic level, profit depends on revenue and costs, but strong commercial thinking requires you to identify which specific driver has changed and why.

You should also understand customers and competition. This includes recognizing customer segments, purchasing criteria, switching behavior, competitor positioning, substitutes, and the factors that can influence market share.

Pricing is another core area of business knowledge for case interviews. You should understand that pricing decisions can depend on customer willingness to pay, competitor prices, product differentiation, costs, strategic objectives, and the expected impact on demand.

Market dynamics provide the broader context. Useful concepts include market growth, market size, customer trends, regulation, technology changes, competitive intensity, and barriers to entry.

For example, imagine a company considering a price increase. A complete analysis would not stop at calculating the additional revenue per unit.

You would also consider:

• How customers might respond
• Whether competitors are likely to change their prices
• Whether demand is price sensitive
• Whether the product is differentiated
• How the change could affect sales volume and profit margins
• Whether different customer segments may respond differently

This is the type of commercial judgment that turns basic knowledge into useful case interview analysis.

Master’s students should also have a working understanding of common financial concepts such as revenue, gross margin, operating costs, profit, return on investment, and break even analysis. You generally do not need advanced accounting knowledge unless it is specifically relevant to the role or case.

Industry knowledge can help, but it should come after these fundamentals. It is more valuable to understand how to analyze an unfamiliar business model than to memorize detailed facts about dozens of industries.

The goal is to build a transferable foundation. If you understand business models, revenue drivers, cost structures, profitability, customers, competition, pricing, and market dynamics, you can apply the same commercial reasoning across a wide range of consulting cases.

How Can Master’s Students Build Business Acumen for Case Interviews?

Master’s students can build business acumen for case interviews by repeatedly analyzing how real companies make money, serve customers, compete, and respond to commercial challenges. The most effective approach combines business reading, company analysis, case practice, and structured reflection so that commercial concepts become easier to recognize and apply during unfamiliar consulting cases.

A useful starting point is to study companies rather than memorize isolated business concepts. Choose a company and try to understand its business model using a small set of questions.

Ask yourself:

• What does the company sell?
• Who are its main customers?
• How does it generate revenue?
• What are its largest costs?
• What determines demand?
• Who are its main competitors?
• What could increase or reduce profitability?
• What risks could affect future performance?

This exercise develops commercial thinking because it forces you to connect individual concepts such as pricing, customer behavior, revenue drivers, and cost structure within one business.

Study business news with a commercial lens

Reading business news can strengthen commercial awareness, but passive reading is usually not enough. Instead of simply remembering what happened, ask why the development matters economically.

For each major business story, consider:

• What changed?
• Which companies or customers are affected?
• How could revenue change?
• How could costs change?
• What might competitors do in response?
• What decision might management need to make?

For example, if a manufacturer faces rising raw material costs, think beyond the fact that costs increased. Consider whether the company could raise prices, renegotiate supplier contracts, change its product mix, improve productivity, or accept lower margins.

This type of analysis helps convert current business knowledge into business judgment in case interviews.

Break companies into their economic drivers

Another effective exercise is to reduce a company to the few variables that determine its performance.

For a retailer, you might think about:

• Number of stores
• Customers per store
• Average transaction value
• Product margins
• Inventory costs
• Labor costs

For a subscription business, important drivers might include:

• Number of subscribers
• Subscription price
• Customer acquisition
• Retention
• Customer churn
• Cost to serve each subscriber

The purpose is not to memorize a template for every industry. It is to practice identifying the economic drivers that matter most for a particular business model.

Practice with unfamiliar industries

Business acumen develops faster when you practice outside industries you already understand. Unfamiliar cases force you to reason from first principles rather than rely on prior knowledge.

When you encounter a new industry, start with basic questions about customers, products, revenue, costs, competition, and market dynamics. You can then use the information provided in the case to refine your initial hypotheses.

For example, you may know very little about commercial aviation, medical devices, or industrial packaging. You can still begin by identifying who pays, what drives demand, how capacity affects economics, which costs are important, and what alternatives customers have.

That ability to reason through unfamiliar situations is more valuable in consulting interviews than memorizing detailed industry facts.

Connect every calculation to a business implication

Quantitative practice should also contribute to business acumen for case interviews. After completing a calculation, ask what the result means for the client's problem.

If you calculate that a new product would generate $20 million in annual revenue, that number alone does not determine whether the opportunity is attractive. You may still need to consider investment requirements, profit margins, competitive response, implementation risk, and whether the opportunity is large enough relative to the client's existing business.

Develop the habit of asking:

• So what does this number mean?
• Why does it matter?
• What could explain the result?
• What should we investigate next?
• How does it affect the recommendation?

This helps you connect quantitative analysis with commercial judgment.

Review cases after you finish them

Post case reflection is one of the most useful ways to identify gaps in your business intuition. After each practice case, review not only whether your structure and calculations were correct, but also whether your commercial reasoning was strong.

Consider questions such as:

• Did I identify the most important business drivers early?
• Were my hypotheses specific to the client's situation?
• Did I explain why changes in revenue or costs occurred?
• Did I consider customers and competitors?
• Did I connect exhibit findings to business implications?
• Was my recommendation commercially realistic?
• What business concept did I fail to recognize quickly?

Keep a short record of recurring weaknesses. If you repeatedly struggle with pricing, customer segmentation, fixed and variable costs, or competitive dynamics, you can target those areas directly in later practice.

Build knowledge through repetition, not memorization

You do not need to master every business topic before practicing cases. Business acumen improves as you repeatedly encounter different companies, industries, and decisions and compare the underlying patterns.

Over time, you begin to recognize that many cases involve recurring commercial questions about demand, pricing, costs, capacity, customers, competition, and value creation. The industries may change, but many of the economic relationships remain similar.

For Master’s students, the goal is therefore to create a continuous learning cycle: study a business, identify its economic drivers, practice applying those ideas in cases, review your reasoning, and address the gaps you discover. This approach builds business acumen for case interviews while developing the practical judgment needed to handle unfamiliar consulting problems.

How Do You Apply Commercial Knowledge in Case Interviews?

Commercial awareness for consulting becomes useful when you apply business knowledge to the specific problem in front of you. In case interviews, this means using your understanding of customers, revenue, costs, competition, pricing, and market dynamics to form stronger hypotheses, interpret data, prioritize analysis, and make recommendations that are commercially realistic.

The key is to move beyond identifying facts. You need to explain what those facts mean for the client and how they should influence the next step in your analysis.

Use business knowledge to form better hypotheses

A strong hypothesis should reflect the economics of the client's business rather than a generic framework.

For example, if a retailer's profits are falling, you could initially consider whether the problem is related to:

• Lower customer traffic
• Reduced purchase frequency
• Smaller average transaction values
• Higher product costs
• Increased labor or occupancy costs
• A shift toward lower margin products
• Stronger competitor activity

These hypotheses are more useful than simply stating that revenue may be decreasing or costs may be increasing. They identify the underlying business drivers that could explain the problem.

As the case develops, you should update your hypotheses based on the evidence you receive.

Make your structures specific to the business

Case interview frameworks are useful for organizing your thinking, but they should not replace commercial reasoning. Your structure should reflect the client's business model, objective, and situation.

Imagine a company considering entering a new market. Instead of using a generic market entry structure without modification, you might examine:

• Market attractiveness and growth
• Target customer segments
• Customer needs and willingness to pay
• Competitive intensity
• Expected pricing
• Required capabilities
• Entry costs
• Potential profitability
• Operational and regulatory risks

The relevant factors will depend on the case. A digital service entering a new country may face very different constraints from a manufacturer building a new production facility.

Strong commercial thinking helps you decide which factors deserve the most attention.

Interpret exhibits beyond the numbers

Case interviews often include charts, tables, or other exhibits. Your job is not only to describe what the data shows but also to identify the business implication.

Suppose an exhibit shows that a company's total sales are increasing while its profit margin is falling. A useful interpretation would explore why those trends are moving in opposite directions.

Possible explanations might include:

• Sales growth coming from lower margin products
• Increased discounting
• Rising input costs
• Higher customer acquisition expenses
• Expansion into less profitable markets

You would then identify which explanation should be tested next.

This demonstrates commercial judgment because you are connecting numerical evidence to possible business causes rather than simply repeating the data.

Connect calculations to decisions

Every calculation in a case should help answer a business question. Once you calculate a result, explain its significance.

For example, imagine you estimate that entering a new market could generate $15 million in annual revenue. That figure becomes useful only when you consider it relative to the investment required, expected costs, profit potential, strategic importance, and risks.

After important calculations, ask:

• Is the result large or small relative to the client's business?
• What is driving the result?
• Does it support or weaken the current hypothesis?
• What additional information would change the decision?
• What does this imply for the client?

This habit prevents your case from becoming a sequence of disconnected calculations.

Consider customers and competitors explicitly

Commercial recommendations should account for how other market participants might respond.

If a client raises prices, customers may reduce purchases, switch products, or move to competitors. Competitors may also respond by changing their own prices, promotions, or positioning.

Similarly, if a company launches a new product, you should consider:

• Which customer segment is most likely to buy it
• What problem the product solves
• How it differs from existing alternatives
• Whether customers will switch from another product
• How competitors could respond
• Whether the company can profitably serve the target segment

This perspective helps you avoid recommendations that appear attractive mathematically but are weak commercially.

Evaluate tradeoffs before making recommendations

Most consulting decisions involve tradeoffs. A strategy can increase revenue while also increasing costs, risk, or operational complexity.

For example, expanding into a new market could provide additional growth but may require substantial investment and local capabilities. Reducing prices could increase demand but compress margins.

Your recommendation should therefore reflect both the benefits and the risks of the decision.

A strong answer might explain:

• The main reason the recommendation is attractive
• The evidence supporting it
• The most important risk
• What the client should verify before implementation
• The next action required

This demonstrates business judgment in case interviews because you are showing that commercial decisions rarely depend on a single metric.

The goal is to make every part of your case analysis decision oriented. Your hypotheses should identify plausible business drivers, your calculations should test those drivers, your exhibit interpretations should explain commercial implications, and your final recommendation should connect the evidence to the client's objective.

When you consistently make those connections, commercial knowledge stops being background information and becomes an active part of how you solve consulting cases.

How Can Master’s Students Practice Business Judgment?

Master’s students can practice business judgment by working through realistic business decisions and forcing themselves to explain not only what the data shows, but what a company should do next. The strongest practice combines unfamiliar cases, pricing and profitability questions, market decisions, customer analysis, and structured reflection on the commercial consequences of each choice.

A good exercise is to take a simple business situation and ask what decision management actually needs to make.

For example, imagine a company is considering raising prices. Instead of jumping straight into calculations, think through the decision in stages.

You might ask:

• Which customer segments would be affected?
• How sensitive is demand to price?
• What alternatives do customers have?
• How are competitors priced?
• Would higher prices improve profit even if volume falls?
• Could the price change damage customer retention?
• Should the company raise prices for all customers or only selected segments?

This kind of reasoning develops commercial judgment because you are weighing several business factors at the same time.

Practice profitability decisions

Profitability cases are especially useful because they force you to connect revenue, costs, customers, and operational drivers.

If profit declines, do not stop after identifying whether revenue or costs caused the change. Push further and ask what explains the underlying movement.

For example:

• Did sales volume fall because customer demand weakened?
• Did average prices decrease because of discounting?
• Did product mix shift toward lower margin offerings?
• Did supplier costs increase?
• Did capacity become underutilized?
• Did the company add costs ahead of expected growth?

The objective is to identify the business mechanism behind the numbers.

Practice pricing decisions

Pricing cases are valuable because they require both quantitative analysis and customer judgment.

When evaluating a price change, consider factors such as:

• Customer willingness to pay
• Competitive alternatives
• Product differentiation
• Variable costs
• Current margins
• Expected demand response
• Customer segmentation
• Strategic objectives

You can then test how different price and volume assumptions affect revenue and profitability.

This helps you build intuition around a common business tradeoff. A higher price does not automatically improve profit if the resulting loss in demand is too large.

Practice market entry and growth decisions

Market entry exercises help you think across several dimensions at once.

For a company considering a new market, examine:

• Market size and growth
• Customer needs
• Competitive intensity
• Expected pricing
• Cost to enter
• Required capabilities
• Regulatory constraints
• Potential profitability
• Strategic fit

Then make a decision based on the evidence available rather than treating each category as equally important.

For example, an attractive market may still be a poor opportunity if customer acquisition is expensive or the company lacks a critical capability needed to compete.

Use unfamiliar companies to test your thinking

Practicing only with industries you know well can hide gaps in your reasoning. Choose companies and sectors you know little about and try to understand their economics from first principles.

Start with questions such as:

• Who pays?
• What determines demand?
• What drives revenue?
• What drives costs?
• What limits capacity?
• What causes customers to switch?
• What could competitors change?

You do not need detailed industry knowledge to answer these questions. The goal is to become comfortable forming reasonable hypotheses when information is incomplete.

Make predictions before seeing the answer

One useful way to strengthen business intuition is to make a prediction before reviewing additional data.

For example, before opening an exhibit on profitability, predict which cost categories are most likely to matter for that business. Before reading a market analysis, predict which customer segments might be most attractive.

Then compare your prediction with the evidence.

When you are wrong, ask why. This is often more valuable than simply remembering the correct answer because it exposes the assumption or business concept you misunderstood.

Compare multiple strategic options

Business judgment also improves when you practice choosing between alternatives rather than identifying a single solution.

Imagine a company wants to increase profit. Possible options might include:

• Raising prices
• Reducing operating costs
• Launching a premium product
• Entering a new market
• Improving customer retention

Do not ask only which option could work. Compare them based on likely financial impact, implementation difficulty, risk, customer response, required investment, and strategic fit.

Consulting recommendations often involve choosing among imperfect alternatives, so practicing tradeoffs is essential.

Review the quality of your reasoning

After each practice case, review how you reached your answer.

Ask yourself:

• Did I focus on the most important business drivers?
• Did I make assumptions without evidence?
• Did I consider customer behavior?
• Did I consider competitive response?
• Did I connect calculations to business implications?
• Did I identify meaningful risks?
• Was my recommendation supported by the analysis?

You can also compare your reasoning with feedback from a case partner, coach, or interviewer. Focus on why another approach was stronger rather than simply memorizing the preferred answer.

Business judgment develops through repeated exposure to decisions, consequences, and feedback. The more often you practice explaining why one commercial option is stronger than another, the easier it becomes to make clear and defensible recommendations during consulting interviews.

How Do You Know Your Business Acumen Is Improving?

Business acumen for consulting interviews is improving when you can analyze unfamiliar business problems more quickly, identify the most relevant commercial drivers, and explain what the evidence means for the client. Progress is less about memorizing more business facts and more about showing stronger judgment, clearer prioritization, and more realistic recommendations across different case types.

One of the clearest signs of improvement is that your thinking becomes more specific.

Instead of saying that a company should examine revenue and costs, you begin identifying the particular drivers that are most likely to matter for that business.

For example, you may recognize that a subscription company should examine customer acquisition, retention, pricing, and churn, while a manufacturer may require more attention to production volume, capacity, input costs, and margins.

You generate stronger initial hypotheses

Improved business acumen helps you form reasonable hypotheses earlier in a case.

Your hypotheses should:

• Reflect the client's specific business model
• Focus on plausible commercial drivers
• Help prioritize the analysis
• Change when new evidence becomes available

For example, if a retailer is losing profit while sales remain stable, you might investigate product mix, discounting, supplier costs, labor expenses, or changes in store economics rather than automatically assuming weak demand.

This shows that you are using business knowledge to guide the problem solving process.

You identify revenue and cost drivers faster

Another useful indicator is how quickly you can understand the economics of an unfamiliar company.

When presented with a new business, you should increasingly be able to identify:

• Who the customer is
• What the customer is paying for
• How revenue is generated
• Which costs are likely to be significant
• What determines profit margins
• What factors influence demand
• Which competitors or substitutes matter

You do not need to identify every driver immediately. Strong commercial judgment means recognizing which factors are most likely to influence the client's problem and investigating them first.

You explain why numbers matter

A strong case candidate does more than calculate correctly.

Suppose you determine that a market is worth $500 million. Improving business judgment means automatically asking whether that market is large enough for the client, how much share the company could realistically capture, what profitability might look like, and what investment would be required.

Similarly, if an exhibit shows declining customer retention, you should connect that trend to possible consequences such as lower recurring revenue, higher replacement acquisition needs, or weaker customer economics.

Your analysis becomes stronger when every important number leads to a business implication.

Your recommendations become more specific

Recommendations are another useful test of progress.

Weak recommendations often repeat the analysis or provide generic actions. Stronger recommendations identify what the client should do, why that action is supported by the evidence, and what risks or uncertainties still need to be managed.

A clear recommendation should usually address:

• The proposed action
• The strongest supporting evidence
• The expected commercial benefit
• The most important risk
• The next step or analysis required

For example, rather than saying a company should enter an attractive market, you might recommend entering a specific customer segment because it offers sufficient demand and attractive economics, while first validating customer acquisition costs and the likely competitive response.

You can reason through unfamiliar industries

Strong business acumen does not mean knowing every sector.

A better indicator is whether you can enter an unfamiliar case and establish a logical starting point using basic commercial principles.

When faced with a new industry, you should be able to ask:

• Who pays and why?
• What determines demand?
• How does the company make money?
• What drives costs?
• What limits growth?
• Why might customers choose one competitor over another?

If you can use these questions to create sensible hypotheses without relying on memorized industry facts, your commercial reasoning is becoming more transferable.

You recognize tradeoffs

Business decisions rarely have only benefits.

As your judgment improves, you should become more comfortable identifying competing effects.

For example:

• Higher prices may improve margins but reduce demand
• Cost reductions may increase profit but weaken service quality
• Geographic expansion may create growth but increase operational complexity
• New products may increase revenue but require significant investment
• Greater capacity may support future demand but create underutilization risk

Recognizing these tradeoffs makes your recommendations more commercially realistic.

You need less prompting during practice cases

Another sign of progress is greater independence.

Early in your preparation, you may need frequent prompting to consider customers, competition, pricing, or the meaning of a calculation. With practice, those questions should increasingly arise naturally in your own analysis.

Feedback from case partners or coaches can help you track this change. Look for patterns in whether you are becoming better at prioritizing issues, generating hypotheses, interpreting exhibits, and connecting analysis to decisions.

A simple readiness check is to ask whether you can consistently do the following across unfamiliar cases:

• Understand the business model quickly
• Identify the major revenue and cost drivers
• Develop case specific hypotheses
• Interpret data beyond describing it
• Connect calculations to business implications
• Consider customers and competitors
• Evaluate strategic tradeoffs
• Make an evidence based recommendation
• Explain the main risk and next step

You do not need perfect business knowledge before interviewing. The stronger signal is that you can consistently turn limited information into structured commercial reasoning and make defensible decisions.

For Master’s students, that is the practical goal of building business acumen for consulting interviews. When you can understand unfamiliar businesses, prioritize the drivers that matter, and translate analysis into realistic recommendations, your commercial knowledge is becoming useful rather than simply theoretical.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can Master’s students improve business knowledge for consulting interviews?

Master’s students can improve business knowledge for consulting interviews by studying business models, revenue drivers, cost structures, customers, competition, and pricing, then applying those concepts in practice cases. Regular reflection helps turn business knowledge for case interviews into more practical commercial reasoning.

How can Master’s students build commercial awareness for consulting interviews?

Master’s students can build commercial awareness for consulting by following major business developments, analyzing how companies make money, and considering how customers, competitors, costs, and market dynamics affect decisions. The goal is to understand why business changes matter, not simply remember headlines.

What is the difference between business acumen and business intuition?

Business acumen is the broader ability to understand business models, financial drivers, customers, competition, and strategic decisions, while business intuition is the ability to recognize likely patterns or implications quickly. Business intuition usually strengthens as commercial knowledge and case experience increase.

Which business concepts matter most in case interviews?

The business concepts that matter most in case interviews include business models, revenue drivers, cost drivers, profitability, pricing, customer behavior, competition, and market dynamics. These concepts help candidates identify the commercial factors most relevant to a client problem.

How should you use business news for case interview preparation?

You should use business news for case interview preparation by asking what changed, why it matters, and how it could affect revenue, costs, customers, competitors, or strategy. This approach strengthens commercial thinking by connecting real business developments to the types of decisions discussed in cases.