Benchmarking involves:
A. comparing how different companies perform various value chain activities and then making cross-company comparisons of the costs and effectiveness of these activities.
B. checking whether a company has achieved more of its financial and strategic objectives over the past five years relative to the other firms it is in direct competition with.
C. studying whether a company's resource strengths are more/less powerful than the resource strengths of rival companies.
D. studying how a company's competitive capabilities stack up against the competitive capabilities of selected companies known to have world-class competitive capabilities.
E. comparing the best practices in one industry against the best practices in another industry.
Answer: comparing how different companies perform various value chain activities and then making cross-company comparisons of the costs and effectiveness of these activities.