Diagnose a 20% Fall in Amazon India Daily Active Users

You are a product manager at Amazon. Daily active users (DAU) in India have fallen by 20%. Walk through how you would find the root cause of the decline, stating the assumptions you make along the way. ```hint Find the shape before the cause Before brainstorming reasons, confirm the 20% is real, then pin down when it started, whether it happened overnight or gradually, and which slice of users accounts for most of it. Each answer removes whole families of explanations. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which Amazon surface does this DAU cover: the shopping app and website only, or also services such as Prime Video and Amazon Pay? - Over what period did the drop happen, and is it measured against the previous weeks or the same period last year? - Did DAU fall overnight or slide gradually? - Are orders and revenue in India down by a similar amount, or is the decline only in active users? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Confirming the drop is real before diagnosing it: the DAU definition, tracking changes, and cross-checks against independent signals - Reading the timing and shape of the decline against seasonality and India's shopping-festival calendar - Segmenting users (platform, app version, region, new versus returning, traffic source) and quantifying each segment's contribution to localize the drop - A prioritized set of internal and external hypotheses specific to Amazon in India, each paired with the data that would confirm or rule it out - How the root cause is confirmed, what action follows, and which metrics show recovery ### Follow-up Questions - Suppose the drop is only on Android and starts the day a new app version rolled out. What do you check next? - If DAU fell 20% but orders stayed flat, is this a problem worth fixing? - How would you tell a competitor's festival sale apart from a lasting shift of shoppers to quick-commerce apps?