Downtown Coffee Roasters is a premium cafe that is reputed for its superior customer service. The coffee shop also serves gourmet food to its customers, which allows it to charge a premium price. Budget Beans, in contrast, is a chain of coffee shops that charges the lowest price in the industry due to its self-service policy. However, Perky's Coffee Inc. has found a balance between these two strategic groups by using automated ordering to free up its employees to work as master baristas and bakers, thus focusing on creating excellent products. It charges a price slightly above that of Budget Beans. In this scenario, Perky's Coffee is following a

a. liquidation strategy.
b. product diversification strategy.
c. market penetration strategy.
d. blue ocean strategy.