Keurig Case Study

1. One of Keurig Coffee’s resources is the engineering and design team and their capability to develop new products. Using the Resource Based View, determine and explain if this resource has the potential to provide sustainable competitive advantage. Discuss the four attributes under the Resource Based View.

To have the potential of sustained competitive advantage, the resource-based view proposes that a firm must have four attributes: (1) valuable resources; (2) rare resources; (3) imperfectly imitable resources; and (4) non-substitutability of resources. The use of all of a firm’s resources through bundling contributes to unique combinations that allow a firm to establish and sustain a competitive advantage. Keurig Coffee’s engineering and design team is one of their strongest resources that has the potential to contribute to providing a sustainable competitive advantage. However when we evaluate the engineering and design team and their capability to develop new products based on the four attributes of the RBV, we find that not all the criteria are met.

Using the criteria table, Exhibit 3.7, in the textbook on page 98, Keurig Coffee’s engineering and design team resource was evaluated:

|Exhibit 3.7 Criteria for Sustainable Competitive Advantage and Strategic Implications |

|Valuable? |Rare? |Difficult to |Without |Implications for Competitiveness? |

| | |Imitate? |Substitutes? | |

|Yes |Yes |No* |No |Temporary competitive advantage |

(Dees, Eisner & Lumpkin, 2010)

*In evaluating the difficult to imitate criteria, substantial information lends itself to answering yes to difficult to imitate as explained in the third paragraph below. OK

Value refers to the ability of a firm to use its resources in such a way that allows the...