Home Depot Swot Analysis Paper

The Home Depot and Lowes are very similar when it comes to the 4 P’s of marketing. Their prices are very similar and they even offer the same low price guarantee when compared to local competitors. When it comes to promotion The Home Depot spent $793.7 million dollars on advertisements in 2014 (Home Depot: Ad spend, n.d.). Lowes

Home Depot switched to a regional distribution system while upgrading their internal information technology infrastructure to better keep stores’ inventory stocked properly. This major overhaul materialized into The Home Depot’s stock outs dramatically decreasing.

Home Depot caters to the three categories of customers. Do-It-Yourself Customers (DIY): These customers are typically home owners who purchase products and complete their own projects and installations. Do-It-For-Me Customers (DIFM): These customers are typically home owners who purchase materials themselves and hire third parties to complete the project or installation, or both. Home Depot arranges for the installation of a variety of The Home Depot products through qualified independent contractors. Professional Customers: These customers are professional remodelers, general contractors, repairmen, small business owners and

Home Depot’s corporate-level strategy is one of internal growth. This conclusion was reached based on the increased focus that Home Depot has placed on growing its existing online and traditional retail operations. Between 2016 and 2018, Home Depot is expected to invest approximately four billion dollars into improvements in its online and physical retail locations in order to make both work more synergistically and grow sales (Petro, 2016). Home Depot hopes that these investments will continue to increase sales at both its physical and digital retail locations, thereby growing the company without adding significant numbers of physical locations.

The Home Depot mission is rooted upon 8 fundamental values. “ The Home Depot is in the home improvement business and our goal is to provide the highest level of service, the broadest selection of products and the most competitive prices. We are a values-driven company and our eight core values include taking care of our people, giving back to our communities, doing the right thing, excellent customer service, creating shareholder value, building strong relationships, entrepreneurial spirit, and respect for all people” (ir.homedepot.com).

Home Depot is the fastest growing retailer in the U.S. by some accounts. It has a fascinating history of innovation and entrepreneurship. The company had some difficulties in the mid-2000s that some attribute to cultural clashes. However, during this period the company was able to take full advantage of the housing boom. Yet when the bubble burst, Home Depot was forced to claim substantial losses. Despite these loses Home Depot has weathered the storm fairly well and is in prime position to take advantage of an economic recovery; if it ever comes.

A customer service program was developed in 1999 to track the performance of their employees. As incentives for their employees offering great customer service the data received from this tracking is used to reward employees. Additionally, it gave Lowes the ability to recognize the cause of service failures, thus giving them the opportunity to improve in that area. The layout of the store is helpful to the customer in locating the products that they are looking for. Its warehouse style store is laid out so that two shopping carts can pass in the aisles in comfort. This seems to appeal to the female shoppers which initiate eighty percent of home projects Lowes distribution system is strong and efficient. They regionally operate fourteen distribution systems. They efficiently distribute seventy five percent of its merchandise to its stores through the fifteen flatbed distribution centers they have for lumber, building materials and other long length or heavy items. Because can purchase large scale orders they are able to get them at a discount and pass the savings onto their customers. Lowes has multiple technological systems that their customers have access to. They offer how-to-videos, DIY projects, landscaping and lawn ideas, and more helpful videos full of inspiration. The enhanced multi-channel experience for the customer is available in many variations. Lowes has in-store-Wi-Fi, touch screen technology, and barcodes that can be accessed through a customer’s

The Home Depot knows that they must stay on top of technology and management must be able to organize this function in a way that surpasses the competition, pleases the customers, and keep the employees satisfied.

The home improvement sector of the economy is large with two major players in the industry and with many smaller local and regional competitors. These two major competitors are Home Depot and Lowe’s. These two companies account for over $110 billion in total sales each year. Even though sales have gone down over the past few years due to the downturn in the economy they have not gone down nearly as much as home sales and this is due to more people deciding to do more home improvements to their own home then buying a new home. Both of these companies have been able to keep up sales and increase them year over year by improving current

The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) is a home improvement, construction products and services retailer operating over 2,000 big-box stores in the United States and abroad. The Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank with the vision of one-stop shopping for do-it-yourself (DIY) customers, installation services for do-it-for-me (DIFM) customers and competitive products for the professional market. Their DIFM installation programs include products such as carpeting, flooring, cabinets, countertops, and water heaters. In addition, the company provides installation of various professional products like generators and HVAC systems.

Home Depot and Lowe's believe in big warehouse space, an informal atmosphere and low prices. They are able to offer the lower prices to consumers due to their purchasing power. Inventory differs depending on the story type, home centers typically sock more lumber and building supplies, as their biggest customers are contractors. They pay their floor employees minimum wage, and keep overall costs down by keeping them as part time employees.

Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement retailer operating in 45 states, Canada, Chili and Puerto Rico. Home Depot stores aim to serve both do-it-yourselfers and professional contractors with home improvement superstores carrying between 40,000 and 50,000 different products. Home Depot has also been listed as one of Fortune's most admired specialty retailers for the past six years. In order for companies to succeed in the competitive current marketplace they must consider not only the bottom line and their investors but also their impacts on the community, their employees, and their customers. Home Depot was founded on the idea that treating employees well is an important responsibility. Home Depot believes employees that are

One of the differentiating factors of Home Depot was that it incorporated within its members a major aversion to any kind of beauracracy and hierarchy. It was a usual practice at the stores to ignore all kind of paperwork that was sent to them by the headquarters. They undervalued such directives to the extent that they would throw these papers in the waste basket or mark them with “BS” stamp and send it back to the headquarters. They believed that all this was a waste of time of the managers and they had more important things to address to at their stores, the most important of them being : satisfying the

Home Depot competitors are primarily in the home improvement and hardware retail industry, but also compete in the building materials retail and distribution, consumer electronics and appliances retail, and convenience stores and truck stops sectors. Some of Home Depot’s main competitors include: Lowe’s, True Value, and Ace Hardware. Now, these competitors are the main competition of Home Depot and all three stores carry about 75% if not more of what Home Depot sells. Keep in mind, that there are also smaller companies, often family-owned lumberyards or hardware stores that compete with Home Depot and the other large chain stores. However, Home Depot’s biggest competition is Lowe’s. “Home Depot and Lowe’s are home

Home Depot 's target market is individual homeowners/small contractors. Even though the traditional ideology is that cost leadership and product differentiation business strategies are mutually exclusive, Home Depot was successful at using a combination strategy. First, Home Depot optimized the cost leadership strategy by offering low and competitive prices to its customers by emphasizing higher sales volumes with lower margins, while instituting a high inventory turnover. Home Depot successfully offered a warehouse product strategy to the individual consumer for the first time. Previously, this type of price discounting was only available to professional contractors who earned product price