1. Discuss the strategies that Mountain Bank should implement to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace. For Mountain Bank to achieve a competitive advantage over the other local banks in the Northwest region of the United States, they need to introduce both a corporate level and business level strategy. First it start with the big boss or CEO, to decide in what direction it will be sending the company’s four business units. The most critical strategy that needs to be implemented is business level strategy. “[This] concerns how the organization will compete with other companies that provide similar goods and services.” (48) In the Case Study it states that Mountain Bank has four business lines which include retail banking, lending, real estate/mortgage banking and corporate banking. For Mountain Bank to gain the advantage against its competitors each business line needs to have its own strategy that clearly defines what is to be expected from each employee and what is to be provided to each customer. Mountain Bank should implement the cost leadership strategy where the most efficient and cost effective way of business is produced. In this day and time money is a rare commodity that many people are not making enough of and are not ready and willing to part with it often. While taking this into consideration, it is understood that Mountain Bank will be able to take advantage of the tough economic times. Mountain Bank needs to come up with ideas just like Southwest did in bringing more services at lower rates. This has to be a delicate balance of price reduction the quality of services rendered. “A focus on cost reduction cannot come at the expense of producing goods and services with at least acceptable levels of quality and desirable features. Even if an organization’s products are lower-priced than competing products, customers will not purchase them