Are Ingredient Brands Strategic Valuable Resources?
A resource can be said to be strategic valuable if it contributes to enhance efficiency and/or effectiveness of an enterprise (Reed and DeFillippi, 1990; Knyphausen, 1993) or to use profit potentiality and/or to neutralize threat from the environment (Barney, 1992). From a classical microeconomics point of view, strategic valuable resources are perceived as sources of benefit for the enterprise. Sources of benefit are basically differentiated into four types: Ricardian Benefits, Entrepreneur benefits (Schumpeter, 1934; Wieandt, 1994), Monopoly benefits (Klein et al., 1978) and Quasi benefits (Williamson, 1979; Mahoney and Pandian, 1992; Schulze, 1994). Uniqueness and Immobility The demand of uniqueness or at least shortage of resources becomes mandatory if resources are to be used to withdraw competitive advantage out of their sustainable usage. As the diffusion rate of a resource increases, it becomes more and more probable that competitors command the same resource, thereby neutraliz
