20 My friends Curt and Rich own a local bookshop. They are very interested in making plans for improving the shop and better dealing with competition from the other bookshops that serve 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 shops are doing. Rich replied, 'I don't see why; we should only be interested in bookshops. Why don't we study the local competition and even look at what the best bookshops 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 use benchmarking as a planning technique to improve their bookshop? 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 bookshop?