Benchmarking involvesA. comparing how different companies perform various value chain activities and then making cross-company comparisons of the costs of these activities. B. comparing the best practices in one industry against the best practices in another industry. C. studying whether a company's resource strengths are more or less powerful than the resource strengths of rival companies. D. tracking the profit margin along with the value-creating activities. checking whether a company has achieved more of its financial and strategic objectives over the past five years relative to the other firms it is in direct competition with.

The monthly demand equation for an electric utility company is estimated to be p equals 60 minus left parenthesis 10 superscript negative 5 baseline right parenthesis x, where p is measured in dollars and x is measured in thousands of killowatt-hours. the utility has fixed costs of $3 comma 000 comma 000 per month and variable costs of $32 per 1000 kilowatt-hours of electricity generated, so the cost function is upper c left parenthesis x right parenthesis equals 3 times 10 superscript 6 baseline plus 32 x. (a) find the value of x and the corresponding price for 1000 kilowatt-hours that maximize the utility's profit. (b) suppose that the rising fuel costs increase the utility's variable costs from $32 to $38, so its new cost function is upper c 1 left parenthesis x right parenthesis equals 3 times 10 superscript 6 baseline plus 38 x. should the utility pass all this increase of $6 per thousand kilowatt-hours on to the consumers?