My friends Curt and Rich own a local bookstore. They are very interested in making plans for improving the store and better dealing with competition from the other bookstores that serve college students in our town. I once heard Curt saying to Rich: "We should be benchmarking what some of the successful coffee shops, restaurants, and novelty stores are doing." Rich replied: "I don't see why; we should only be interested in bookstores. Why don't we study the local competition and even look at what the best bookstores are doing in the big cities?"
Who is right, Curt or Rich? If you were hired as a planning consultant to them, what would you suggest as the best way to utilize benchmarking as a planning technique to improve their bookstore? And, how would you use the planning process to help Curt and Rich come to a point of agreement on the best way forward for their bookstore?