Hello Nadir,

I found the following statement quite interesting "the lower number of customer complaints you
have, the more organic and external growth you will obtain to ensure your competitive edge
remains intact". A number of approaches are used by businesses to identify the resources that
contribute to a firm's competitive advantages - the Hall and Andriani approach is one common
one.
Nadir and class: please read the recommended reading for this topic (Williamson et al. pp. 110
114) and discuss the two stages of Hall and Andriani in detail.
Dr. Abu
Achieving competitive advantage is every organizations main goal. In order to identify the
nature, the power and the continuity of the competitive advantage, a number of approaches are
used, one of which is the Hall and Andrianis approach.
The Hall and Andrianis approach is a technique which is concerned with identifying the nature,
strength, and sustainability of competitive advantage in terms of the features which customers
value, the intangible resources which produce these features and the development scenarios for
each key intangible resource (Hall & Andriani, 1999, p.53). This technique has two stages as
per Williamson et al (2004), while Hall & Andriani (1999) talk about three. We will discuss the
first two.
The first stage is to identify the key product/delivery system attributes that customers find
important. According to Hall & Andriani (1999), this analysis can be carried out for all the
products / services the company offers or can be carried out for separate product ranges /
services. It can also be carried out for customers, distributors etc The questions to be asked
include: product image, user statement, price, value for money, user friendliness, availability,
rapid response to enquiry, quick response to customer demand, importance of delivery dates,
product range width, minimizing product to market time, quality of the product as per customers
request, quality of the product as per specifications, safety measures, etc
After identifying the key attributes that might be of customers interest, these resources are then
weighted by importance. It will be then possible to use benchmarking techniques of each
resources quality against the competitors (Williamson et al., 2004).
The second stage is concerned in detecting the intangible resources which produce the key
attributes. Hall & Andrianis (1999) suggestion is to select the intangible resources from the
proposed four capabilities framework: Regulatory assets (legal entities, property rights,
trademarks, contracts, etc), positional assets (assets which are legal entities), functional
resources (individual or team skills, employees, suppliers, distributors), and cultural resources

(which form the characteristics of the company). The use of this framework is highly
recommended because it contains a full range of resources.
The next step is to list the key attributes and their corresponding intangible resource in order to
identify the proper competence for each resource. (Hall & Andriani, 1999).
It is now important to consider the way to develop the key intangible resources. They have to be
protected, sustained, enhanced and exploited.

References
Richard, H, & Pierpaolo, A (1999), 'Developing and managing strategic partnerships', European
Journal Of Purchasing And Supply Management, 5, pp. 53-65, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost,
viewed 24 June 2013
Williamson, D 2004, Strategic Management And Business Analysis [Electronic Book] / David
Williamson ... [et al.], n.p.: Amsterdam ; Elsevier, Butterworth-Heineman, 2004., University of
Liverpool Catalogue, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 June 2013