The Home Depot, Inc. Market Trends

of Home Depot, Inc. , reproduced in Appendix A of this textbook. (The 2012 financial

The Home Depot’s two main customers are at home “do-it-yourselfers” and contractors. The main products and services offered help solve the wants and needs of customers involved with home construction and maintenance,

The growing trend of home improvement has perpetuated a larger demand for box store home improvement shops such as Home Depot and Lowe’s. There are several types of companies that contribute to the booming renovation industry. Home Depot and Lowe’s provide all the

This allows Home Depot to better utilize resources by targeting demographic categories that are likely to be interested in home improvement or contracting services. Home Depot advertises a low price guarantee, including beating competitors’ prices by 10% (The Home Depot, 2016). Home Depot’s current marketing slogan is “More Saving, More Doing”. Home Depot markets to both the inexperienced homeowner as well as contractors for its products and services. The company’s marketing strategy, slogan, and price match guarantee all fit the current corporate strategy of growth through increasing sales at existing retail locations and online to both contractors and homeowners. As an organization within an industry where low price is likely necessary due to lack of differentiation, Home Depot’s marketing strategy focused on low price is necessary. The low-cost without focus strategy at the business level is also aligned with this marketing focus. Since Home Depot is looking to gain customers in the broader market, focusing on both do-it-yourself customers and contractors is

Retailing building supply stores have become a popular retail industry sector due to increased public awareness and the need of many homeowners for the home improvement products. Back in the 1970s, long before warehouse stores ruled home improvement land, do-it-yourselfers shopped at “home centers.” These 30,000 square foot stores offered cheaper prices and wider selection of products, about 25,000 more than local hardware stores and eliminated the extra trip to the lumberyard. The dependence of many of these retailers upon the homebuilding industry for much of their business has also been reduced and the warehouse superstores, such as Home Depot, have become more important. The smaller companies in the

Financially, Home Depot has had a strong fiscal year with “ reported sales of $24.9 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2015, a 4.3 percent increase from the second quarter 2014” (The Home

As stated earlier, the home improvement industry takes in $755 billion annually. However, due to the softening of the housing market and declining home sales, companies in this industry has had to

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 first company that will be analyzed is Home Depot. Home Depot's total assets increased to $40,518 million from $40,125, an increase of 0.9%. These figures, however, are lower than the value of total assets on the books for HD for the prior three years. The 2008 fiscal year was the point where Home Depot had the highest asset levels at $44.324 billion. The recession has been the biggest culprit for the decline in the size of Home Depot. All of the firms in the building supplies industry have a strong relationship between their sales and the strength of the housing market, as home purchases are a major impetus for home renovation projects. Home Depot's size declined with the onset of slowness in the housing market, and it is expected that its size will not begin to increase until the housing market recovers. Home Depot management has noted that there are signs of life in the US housing market, and that this should be taken as an encouraging sign for the company (Isidore, 2012). Indeed, the company's balance sheet has grown in size throughout the 2013 fiscal year, so that the latest Q3 total

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When disaster strikes, The Home Depot is among the first organizations on the scene to ensure its customers have the supplies, resources and support they need to rebuild their homes and communities.

Elasticity : rising or falling price lead changes in quantity of demand, and the quantity of supply and this so-called elasticity

An identification of the accounting concept involved in the Home Depot concept is Operating leverage. Business managers apply operating leverage to magnify small changes in revenue into dramatic changes in profitability (Edmonds, Tsay, & Olds, 2011). Operating leverage comes into play when a firm has a combination of fixed and variable cost. According to Thomas P. Edmonds, Bor-Yi Tsay, & Philip R. Olds explained that when all costs are fixed, every sales dollar contributes one dollar toward the potential profitability of a project (2011). They further explained that a simple small change in a business' sales volume can significantly affect the company’s profitability (2011).

. Today, homeowners find instead that the economy keeps them from leaving their current living situation, and now favor making home improvements. Home Depot, a National Big box retailer, announced February, 2011 that ”it will hire more than 60,000 seasonal associates in time for the Company's second annual Spring Black Friday event”,(Home Depot ) in anticipation of an expected increase in purchases by these homeowners. Financially, a savvy homeowner finds that making home improvements in the long run leads to increasing the value of the home. The question today most people are asking is, ‘how beneficial is it to renovate my home with the new energy efficient, green and sustainable’ products, or should I just make a few repairs and paint the house?’