Mountain Bank
Jameelah Richardson
Dr. Barrett
HRM 530
January 22, 2012

Discuss the Strategies that Mountain Bank should implement to achieve a Competitive Advantage in the Marketplace

Mountain Bank would need to create a strategy that would cause them to stand out among the competition. Their focus should be matching the products and services offered to the needs and wants of both new and existing customers. Mountain Bank has four lines of business that could produce a substantial amount of revenue for them. These four lines of business are retail banking, consumer banking, real estate and mortgage banking, and corporate banking. Out of these four, retail banking seems to be generating most of the income for Mountain Bank.
As of today, Mountain Bank has 50% of the market for retail accounts in their serving area. Retail banking makes up personal checking and savings accounts for everyday consumers and even though the bank generates revenue through monthly maintenance fees, overdraft fees, and other services render by the bank, it’s not generating major revenue as would a mortgage or corporate account. In order for Mountain Bank to stay afloat, cost leadership and differentiation strategy should be implemented. A cost leadership strategy is a business-level strategy that seeks to produce goods and services inexpensively. Now the problem with this particular strategy would be there are many banks out here with the same products and services Mountain Bank offers, which in turn, doesn’t give Mountain Bank much room to stand out or be different from any other bank. Only one bank can be a cost leader and with regulations and mergers happening within the banking world, already establish or large banks would just become larger while smaller banks remain smaller. Of course Mountain Bank could strategize itself by lowering their cost on their