Final answer:
The firm must be in a perfectly competitive market structure.
Step-by-step explanation:
The firm must be in a perfectly competitive market structure.
In a perfectly competitive market, there are many buyers and sellers, and no individual firm has control over the price of the product. Each firm is a price taker, meaning they must accept the market price as given. The total cost function provided in the question is consistent with the cost structure of a firm in a competitive market.
Therefore, based on the given total cost function and the assumption that the firm takes the price of their product as given, we can conclude that the firm is operating in a perfectly competitive market structure.