Main Question : Specifically for Home Depot, why does its innovative Enhanced Voice Recognition System fit the criteria of the "Valuable" and "Rare"

Main Question : Specifically for Home Depot, why does its innovative Enhanced Voice Recognition System fit the criteria of the "Valuable" and "Rare" characteristics based on the Resource-Based Theory? Please provide analysis and references. 

Background Information:

Enhanced voice search - Thanks to smart assistants like Google Home and Siri, voice technology has become a part of many people's everyday lives. For the first time, customers can speak to the Home Depot app as they smart assistant. Using new voice technology powered by Googles Dialogflow, the app can understand conversational questions and commands and deliver better, more relevant search results. The app can also search through the more than 1 million items on homedepot.com using text, barcodes or images.

Resource Based Theory: resource-based view (RBV) is a way of viewing the firm and in turn of approaching strategy

VRIN Characteristics:

·      Valuable - When resources are able to bring value to the firm they can be a source of competitive advantage.

·      Rare - Resources have to deliver a unique strategy to provide a competitive advantage to the firm as compared to the competing firms. Consider the case where a resource is valuable but it exists in the competitor firms as well. Such a resource is not rare to provide competitive advantage

·      Inimitable - Resources can be sources of sustained competitive advantage if competing firms cannot obtain them. Consider the case where a resource is valuable and rare but the competing organizations can copy them easily. Such resources also cannot be sources of competitive advantage

·      Non-substitutable - Resources should not be able to be replaced by any other strategically equivalent valuable resources. If two resources can be utilized separately to implement the same strategy then they are strategically equivalent. Such resources are substitutable and so are not sources of sustained competitive advantage.