Recources and Capabilities

Resources ad Capabilities

Student’s Names

Institution’s Name

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Resource-based view (RBV) is a strategy that is used in an organization to achieve competitive advantage. My company of choice is Almarai which is food and beverage company based in Saudi Arabia. RBV is a good way of assessing the organization’s competencies and its weaknesses as well. In this case, the company has several resources which are utilized by the management. These resources lead to internal improvements and new products to enable them compete effectively in the market. The company has tangible and intangible resources. Three resources and capabilities of the company include: Market position, Expansive supply chain and awareness of brand. VRIO (Valuable, Rare, Imitable, Organization) is a framework for business analysis which is a part of an organization’s larger strategic scheme (Chatzoglou et al 2018). The following is the rating of the organization’s resources and capabilities in relation to VRIO:

Resources Valuable Rare Imitate Organization

Market Position Yes Yes Challenging Yes

Expansive supply chain Yes Yes Close-sharing same supply chains No

Awareness of Brand Yes Yes No Yes

The market position is valuable, rare, challenging to imitate, the organization is also good. Secondly, the supply chain is valuable and rare. It however shares supply chains with other companies. In terms of organization, the company is not well organized on the supply chain as it faces some challenges. The brand awareness is valuable, rare but faces challenges in terms of imitation. The company is however well organized through putting in place several competitive measures.

The VRIO indicates that the company’s brand is the main resource for the competitive strategies in the food and beverage market. To strengthen the corporate image, the brand and to improve its value chain’s effectiveness, the company can make use of innovative marketing as well as customer relationship management. This strategy will also help it maintain and improve on its market position. On the expansive supply chain, the company can ensure improvement on communication with the suppliers and ensure reliability as well. According to Perez-Franco et al (2016) ensuring selection of reliable suppliers helps to avoid effects on the supply chain.

In the discussion above, it is clear that determining the competitiveness of a company is very essential. The VRIO (Valuable, Rare, Imitable, Organization) framework is thus the most efficient tool for assessing the competitive advantage of a company. My company of choice, Almarai, as seen can benefit a lot from this framework. A critical look at the company’s assessment can prove that the company has a very strong competitive advantage but need to put in place some measure to improve on the selected resources and capabilities.

References

Chatzoglou, P., Chatzoudes, D., Sarigiannidis, L., & Theriou, G. (2018). The role of firm-specific factors in the strategy-performance relationship: Revisiting the resource-based view of the firm and the VRIO framework. Management Research Review.

Perez-Franco, R., Phadnis, S., Caplice, C., & Sheffi, Y. (2016). Rethinking supply chain strategy as a conceptual system. International Journal of Production Economics, 182, 384-396.