Capabilities are valuable, rare, costly to imitate and non substitutable are core competencies. Core competencies are sources of competitive advantage for the firm over its rivals. A sustained competitive advantage is achieved only when the competitors cannot duplicate the benefits of a firm's strategy or when they lack the resources to attempt imitation. Sustainable competitive advantage results only when all four criteria are satisfied. For a capability to be a core competence, it must be valuable and unique.
IN VALUABLE, valuable capabilities allow the firm to exploit opportunities or neutralise threats in its external environment. By effectively using capabilities to exploit opportunities, a firm creates value for customers. CX right now serves 115 destinations in 36 countries and territories; CX continues to exploit new joint ventures and new routes over the globe, and by having more routes and destinations, it strengthens the value for customers. In addition, the acquisition of Dragon Air in 2006 wholly is another point to note as CX has even larger expansions in China region after the takeover. Rare capabilities are capabilities are capabilities that few if any competitors possess. CX has a relatively large fleet 122 aircrafts serving in the air and there would be 37 new orders placed with AIRBUS and BOEING. Rivals in the region Singapore Airlines owns 103 aircrafts as the latest information published at their annual report. Costly-to-imitate capabilities are capabilities that other firms cannot easily develop. From the point of view of CX customers, they feel a warmth from CX has a long history established in Hong Kong 1946, far from the colony of British hands, it is the first airline in Hong Kong. Apart from Hong Kong Citizen, CX also won many global awards like the AIRLINE OF THE YEAR in the world's largest passenger poll conducted by Skytrax in 2005. The following year CX was named AIRLINE OF THE YEAR 2006 by AIR