Case Study - One You are asked to analyze these problems as listed below and provide the solution to the problem in a crisp two page memo (Not exceeding 700 words). Please provide clear justification and analysis, See Attached File Page #4 as a reference. THE ARDEN COMPANY The Arden Company operated in a slow growth business offering a commodity product for which total demand was highly price inelastic. The product was sold through industrial distributors by both the Arden Company and its seven competitors. Six of these competitors were very small factors in the industry that operated only locally or regionally and none had a greater market share than 4%. The strongest of the competitors was the Columbia Corporation which in the past two years had increased its market share by a bit less than two points, with almost all of the increase coming from Arden. Recently, a new young and aggressive team had assumed the top management posts at Columbia and it was well known that this team had given first priority to achieving a significant improvement of Columbia's position in the market. Management at Arden, therefore, was faced with the need for designing a marketing strategy which would be effective in meeting this potential challenge. To provide a basis for strategy planning, Arden's management compared their economic structure with Columbia's. Their analysis produced the following information: Economic Indicators Companies Arden Columbia ($ millions) Current market share 61% 22% Current dollar sales $403 $146 Breakeven point $217 $121 Safety factor 46% 17% Variable margin rate 48% 45% Loss in variable margin from a 5-percentage-point drop in unit price $20.15 $7.30 Volume gain required to offset 5-percentage-point drop in unit price 46.86 18.25 Equivalent share point gain 7.5 2.9 Capacity utilization 80% 75% OUESTIONS: 1. What is Columbia's strategy likely to be? 2. What should Arden's counter-strategy be?