please read the case and answer the following question::

1)what are Alain Passard's resources and capabilities?Are they competitively valuable?? How and why,,What particular resource bundles are so important for Passard and L'Arpge??

Five years after being appointed as Costco Wholesales president and chief executive officer (CEO), Craig Jelinek had demonstrated the ability to enhance the companys standing as one of the worlds biggest and best consumer goods merchandisers. His predecessor, Jim Sinegal, co-founder and CEO of Costco Wholesale from 1983 until year-end 2011, had been the driving force behind Costcos 29-year evolution from a startup entrepreneurial venture into the third largest retailer in the United States, the seventh largest retailer in the world, and the undisputed leader of the discount warehouse and wholesale club segment of the North American retailing industry. Jelinek was handpicked by Sinegal to be his successor. Since January 2012, Jelinek had presided over Costcos growth from annual revenues of $89 billion and 598 membership warehouses at year-end fiscal 2011 to annual revenues of $119 billion and 715 membership warehouses at year-end fiscal 2016. Going into 2017, Costco ranked as the second largest retailer in both the United States and the world (behind Walmart). Company Background The membership warehouse concept was pioneered by discount merchandising sage Sol Price, who opened the first Price Club in a converted airplane hangar on Morena Boulevard in San Diego in 1976. Price Club lost $750,000 in its first year of operation, but by 1979 it had two stores, 900 employees, 200,000 members, and a $1 million profit. Years earlier, Sol Price had experimented with discount retailing at a San Diego store called Fed-Mart. Jim Sinegal got his case 2 Copyright 2018 by Arthur A. Thompson Jr. All rights reserved. start in retailing at the age of 18, loading mattresses for $1.25 an hour at Fed-Mart while attending San Diego Community College. When Sol Price sold FedMart, Sinegal left with Price to help him start the San Diego Price Club store; within a few years, Sol Prices Price Club emerged as the unchallenged leader in member warehouse retailing, with stores operating primarily on the West Coast. Although Price originally conceived Price Club as a place where small local businesses could obtain needed merchandise at economical prices, he soon concluded that his fledgling operation could achieve far greater sales volumes and gain buying clout with suppliers by also granting membership to individuals a conclusion that launched the deep-discount warehouse club industry on a steep growth curve. When Sinegal was 26, Sol Price made him the manager of the original San Diego store, which had become unprofitable. Price saw that Sinegal had a special knack for discount retailing and for spotting what a store was doing wrong (usually either not being in the right merchandise categories or not selling items at the right price points)the very things that Sol Price was good at and that were at the root of Price Clubs growing success in the marketplace. Sinegal soon got the San Diego store back into the black. Over the next several years, Sinegal continued to build his prowess and talents for discount merchandising. He mirrored Sol Prices attention to detail and absorbed all the nuances and subtleties of his mentors style of operatingconstantly improving store Case 2 Costco Wholesale in 2017: Mission, Business Model, and Strategy 239 operations, keeping operating costs and overhead low, stocking items that moved quickly, and charging ultralow prices that kept customers coming back to shop. Realizing that he had mastered the tricks of running a successful membership warehouse business from Sol Price, Sinegal decided to leave Price Club and form his own warehouse club operation. Sinegal and Seattle entrepreneur Jeff Brotman (now chairman of Costcos board of directors) founded Costco, and the first Costco store began operations in Seattle in 1983the same year that Walmart launched its warehouse membership format, Sams Club. By the end of 1984, there were nine Costco stores in five states serving over 200,000 members. In December 1985, Costco became a public company, selling shares to the public and raising additional capital for expansion. Costco became the first ever U.S. company to reach $1 billion in sales in less than six years. In October 1993, Costco merged with Price Club. Jim Sinegal became CEO of the merged company, presiding over 206 PriceCostco locations, with total annual sales of $16 billion. Jeff Brotman, who had functioned as Costcos chairman since the companys founding, became vice chairman of PriceCostco in 1993 and was elevated to chairman of the companys board of directors in December 1994, a position he continued to hold in 2017. In January 1997, after the spin-off of most of its nonwarehouse assets to Price Enterprises Inc., PriceCostco changed its name to Costco Companies Inc. When the company reincorporated from Delaware to Washington in August 1999, the name was changed to Costco Wholesale Co