A competitive advantage emerges when change occurs within an organization or industry environment. Generating superior business returns above competitors is the means to achieve such a competitive advantage. This research empirically examined and placed emphasis on the importance of a firm’s resources and the capabilities of the organization in relation to the firm’s competitive advantage. A total of 156 Thai canned and processed seafood exporters were invited to participate in the study. A questionnaire survey was conducted collecting a sample which obtained data from 48 respondents, namely managers or leading team members in canned and seafood exporter companies. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) was used to test the hypotheses. The overall findings indicated that resource-related variables are the most important explanatory variables regarding the competitive advantage of export companies. However, there are strong interactive effects between the two variable-sets, resources and capability. The results reveal that it is recommended to build resources, in order to be effective in developing superior business returns; this should be followed by developing capabilities
