Home Depot vs. Lowes Essay

Home Depot’s retail strategy is one of reasons for its fast growth and continued leadership in the home improvement retailer industry. Its focus on speed, efficiency, and quality has made it one of the largest retailers in the world. Home Depot focuses on being a leader in “product authority.” Walmart and Costco are leaders

Home Depot has clearly set itself up to be successful in the recent upswing in the housing markets. Their technology upgrade has proven to be successful in keeping stores stocked and employees more engaged with helping the customers.

The Home Depot mission statement reads as follows: “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 values include the following: excellent customer service, taking care of our people, giving back, doing the “right” things, creating shareholder value, respect for all people, entrepreneurial spirit, and building strong relationships.”

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.

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.

If we look at Home Depot's business segments and the statistics on new home sales, we can see where the challenge is. According to the Commerce Department, sales of new homes grew by 6.6% in the month, setting the annual pace for 2010 to 307,000 total units sold. Although, there was an increase in September, this annual pace is the worst on new home sales since 1963, even when mortgage rates are at an all time low. This signifies why there would be disappointment from Home Depot. It is quite obvious that they will continue to struggle, at least through the 4th quarter of this year due to an industry dependent upon a strong real estate market.

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

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

Examples include Lowe’s, Ace Hardware, Sears, 84 Lumber, Best Buy, Costco Wholesale, Menard, Northern Tool, Sherwin-Williams, Target, Wal-Mart, True Value Hardware and Lumber Liquidators. Through imitation and replication, principal rival Lowe’s, Inc. ($30.2B) has grown from a (1946) small family-owned North Carolina hardware store, to an international home improvement giant with over 1,700 retail outlets. Lowe’s Inc. ($30.2B) is now the premier challenger to Home Depot’s competitive advantage as these firms manifest duopoly characteristics in the US home improvement industry. According to the Data Monitor Group, the maximum capacity of the US home improvement market is 3,500 stores. With Home Depot Co. ($51.1B) and Lowe’s, Inc. ($30.2B) collectively operating at that level, both companies have begun to focus on international markets for future growth.

Background The Home Depot is one of the largest home improvement retailers in the national has taken a wide assortment of building materials, home improvement products and lawn & garden products to provide one of the best customer services in the business as per the article (How Home Depot Make Money, 2017). The Home Depot was commenced Arthur Blank, and Pat Farrah, in the year 1978. The inspiration of setting up this company was to give customers a home improvement solution, with multiple stores across the nation larger than any of their competitor's facilities. They are the lead suppliers to all sorts of materials from the easiest DYI project to the most complex project of constructing a whole entire house (The Home Is Where Our Story Begins,

Home Depot’s objective is to provide a wide-range of innovative and value focused products for its customers. For any type of organization offering products or services in any given market industry, there is a certain boundary to just how much business there is to go around. “Since the recession, the company has witnessed phenomenal growth with the stock price growing by over 270% in

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

The Home Depot Inc. was founded in 1978 and is the world’s largest home improvement retailer and the second largest retailer in the United States. The sales for the fiscal year 2000 were $45.7 billion, compared to $38.4 billion in fiscal 1999. As of January 2001, the company was operating 1,134 retail stores in forty-seven states, six Canadian provinces, Puerto Rico, Chile and Argentina.

The Company operates retail stores and call centers, and conducts online retail operations. Home Depot is considered a service based business. Home depot depends on people and the client experience and it also targets different markets in general.

The foreign markets have significant opportunities for the growing civilizational and economy, which favor the demand for modern home improvement products. Therefore, Home Depot should also consider global expansion to spread their quality products and generate more sales and revenue.