Downtown Coffee Roasters is a premium cafe that is reputed for its superior customer service. The coffee shop also serves gourmet food to its customers, which allows it to charge a premium price. Budget Beans, in contrast, is a chain of coffee shops that charges the lowest price in the industry due to its self-service policy. However, Perky's Coffee Inc. has found a balance between these two strategic groups by using automated ordering to free up its employees to work as master baristas and bakers, thus focusing on creating excellent products. It charges a price slightly above that of Budget Beans. In this scenario, Perky's Coffee is following a

a. liquidation strategy.
b. product diversification strategy.
c. market penetration strategy.
d. blue ocean strategy.
d. blue ocean strategy.

Explanation:
In this scenario, Perky's Coffee is following the blue ocean strategy. A blue ocean strategy allows a firm to offer a differentiated product or service at low cost.

As Downtown Coffee Roasters is a premium cafe which is reputed for its superior customer service. The coffee shop also serves gourmet food to its customers, which allows it to charge a premium price. Whereas, Budget Beans is a chain of coffee shops that charges the lowest price in the industry due to its self-service policy. However, Perky's Coffee Inc. has found a balance between these two strategic groups by using automated ordering to free up its employees to work as master baristas and bakers, thus focusing on creating excellent products. It charges a price slightly above that of Budget Beans. In this scenario, Perky's Coffee is following a blue ocean strategy. In blue ocean strategy, organizations pursuit differentiation and low cost at the same time simultaneously which Perky's Coffee Inc. is doing here in this case. Perky's has created a totally new demand by following this strategy quite successfully and has made the competition totally and almost irrelevant.