Madison Engineering $($ME$)$ operates in the Vaporware industry. ME has excellent relationships with independent industry experts who are willing to recommend ME's products to consumers. This has helped ME overcome its fierce rivals in the industry; the vast majority of these rivals lack such endorsements at the moment. Buyers in the industry can be fickle and may coalesce around demanding features which are significant to them.

ME's much prized manufacturing facilities failed to boost revenues or lower costs; competitors neither possess, nor can directly duplicate nor find cheaper alternatives for these manufacturing facilities. All eyes are now on ME's unique technological processes and procedures used to launch its latest product, Madisun. These policies and procedures enjoy patent protection. Madison Engineering is financially sound and able to fight off potential infringements. Most competitors of ME currently don't possess the technological processes and procedures that helped ME produce Madisun. Analysts think that the processes and procedures employed to conceive Madisun will assist ME in neutralizing the enduring pressures placed on the Vaporware industry by lesser$-$priced alternatives. A majority of these alternatives exist outside the Vaporware industry.

Based only on the information above, one would be correct in their analysis that Madison's Engineering's relationship with independent experts:

A$.$ is only. a source of competitive parity

B$.$ Is at least a source of temporary competitive advantage

c$.$ Is a source of sustained competitive advantage

d$.$ is a costly to imitate capability