VRIO is a Resource-based model that helps assess a firms relative strengths and weaknesses. Value Chain includes all activities that contribute to Organisational Capability in the creation of goods and services. Explain Primary and Support Activities and apply the VRIO model to Value Chain activities highlighted in the case below:

The Case

Guided by their slogan Touching lives, improving life, Gamble (P & G) is known throughout the world as a leading light in consumer brands. It is organized as two global business units, namely Beauty & Grooming, and Household Care. Its over 250 brands include: Max Factor, Braun, Gillette, Old Spice, Oral B, and Vicks. P & G employs over 118 000 people in 80 countries. It is estimated that, on average, every person in the world spends about $12 annually on P & G products.

In 2015 the company set as its goal to reach revenues of US$100billion (up from US$83billion), which would demand an increase in customer base from 4.2 billion to 5 billion. The strategic challenge was then how to reach that goal. One strategy was to move rapidly into China and India, not by acquisitions or JVs but organically. To do so would require P & G to re-assess the suitability of its established core competencies to ensure that the attributes that had served it so well would be value-creating to a new set of international customers. It had become a mantra within the P & G senior echelons that Organic growth is more valuable because it comes from our core competencies, exercises our innovation muscle, so that as we use it, it gets stronger!

P & Gs core competencies have been developed from the following mix of tangible and intangible resources:

Customer understanding it conducts 20 000 studies each year so as to better understand customer needs and preferences, which support its broad product portfolio

Supply chain management competency so as to reach customers at the right place at the right time

Advertising expertise essential to the creation of brand loyalty

Superb research and development skills that are foundational to innovation, quality, and product development

Please answer in less than 400 words