What you're describing here is the notion of activity systems! Michael Porter describes the concept in detail in the article "What is Strategy," Harvard Business Review. The crux of the idea is that the strategic position of a product hinges on a system of activities across a range of areas, from marketing, to product development, to distribution. Activity systems are a source of sustainable competitive advantage because a competitor can imitate one or two activities, but often not the entire system. In other words, a competitor (e.g., RIM) can imitate Apple's hardware or its software, but this is not sufficient. To really compete with Apple, a competitor would need to imitate (and supersede) Apple on a number of fronts: hardware, software, marketing/branding, distribution, logistics, etc. Needless to say, this is quite a challenge!
One of the most stark examples is Southwest Airlines. Scheduled passenger air transportation is a highly transparent industry due to the heavy regulation by the U.S. DOT and the FAA. Despite the fact that competitors know the precise activities that Southwest Airline's performs, they have been generally unable to imitate and compete. And there have been a number of attempts by both legacy and start-up carriers.