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Customer Oriented Value Analysis The Home Depot, Inc SWOT Analysis Strengths Well-known and well-recognized brand name. The Home Depot, Inc. is one of the largest diversified wholesale home improvement distributors in America: it is the second largest retailer in the United States and the third largest retailer in the world. The company operates a number of stores, EXPO Design Center locations, Landscape Supply stores, etc. Special business model. The Home Depot, Inc.
serves DIY (Do-It-Yourself) customers, DIFM (Do-It-For-Me) customers, and professional customers such as general contractors, remodelers, tradesmen, and repairmen. The company sells products in spacious warehouses with a broad assortment of products with sales associates, who are able to provide the customers with detailed information about home improvement production. A broad spectrum of products and services under the slogan You can do it, we can help. The Home Depot, Inc.
offers services and products for building, improving and maintaining homes, businesses and municipal infrastructures (Our Stores 2007). The company carries a number of exclusive brands such as Glacier Bay (bath and faucets), Hampton Bay (ceiling fans, lighting and patio furniture), RIDGID (power tools), Pegasus (bath and kitchen utensils), Vigor (fertilizer), Husky (tools and instruments), Ryiobi (power tools), Mills Pride, Thomasville cabinetry, Millstead, to mention a few. Good potential for growth. The Home Depot, Inc. plans to become the largest retailer in the world. Weaknesses Desire to grow.
The companys desire to grow has both pluses and minuses for the companys business. As far as the Home Depot, Inc. continues to enter new markets, their operating expenses increase proportionally to their revenue growth. Opportunities The Home Depot, Inc.
s opportunities include further expansion, significant potential of growth, and global sourcing of their production. Additionally, development and implementation of Service Performance Improvement (SPI) programs and other IT projects can deliver significant paybacks to the companys consistent attempts to decrease costs, to increase margins and increase efficiency. Threats The level of competition in retail industry is quite high. Success in retail business is significantly influenced by store location, price, wide assortment of products and services, and customer service. In such a way, competitors can be examined as The Home Depots main potential threat. The second threat is potential saturation of the retail industry.
As far as The Home Depot and its competitors open considerable quantity of stores annually, the retail industry saturation becomes a real threat. Current Market Orientation The Home Depot values its customers. The company undertakes all efforts to understand the demands and necessities of their clients and strives to surpass customers expectations in order to provide the customers with the best possible quality. The Home Depot realizes that loyal customers are crucial to the companys success. In conditions of strict competition in the retailer industry The Home Depot strives to attract the ceiling amount of customers, with different demands and consumption needs.
In order to achieve success, the company embraces both sociological concepts (i. e. stratification of consumers, etc) and desire to know every demand of the customer (i. e. use of consumer relationship management, etc).
The Home Depot implements a policy of partnership. The partnership with a consumer implies something more that making the consumer to be loyal to brand. It implies the effect of personal participation of the consumer, his involvement not only in consumption or purchase, but also participation in developing products and services, or, sometimes, the brand and corresponding style of consumption. The Home Depot actively utilizes several principles of effective marketing: personalization, dialogue character, result-oriented sales, and responsibility factor.
The Home Depot undertakes all efforts to be the best corporate partner. The company helps consumers to fulfill their dreams by assisting them to live in a clean, safe and caring community, to be the part of a challenging, diverse, and inclusive workplace, to build and live in the houses of their dreams, and to create wealth and financial security (All About Us 2007). Value Proposition The Home Depot, Inc. offers a compelling value proposition that helps the company getting the competitive advantage.
The companys entrepreneurial spirit made it the second largest retailer in the world in less than 25 years. Nowadays it operates more than 2, 000 retailer stores with more than 355, 000 employees, who support the companys policy in highly professional way. It offers a well-known brand name and a wide assortment of products and services. The company does it best to invest heavily in the human resource factor (Nardelli, 2006). The Home Depot, Inc. attracts, motivates and retains talents.
Leadership is a Core value and a differentiating factor. Human capital is the Home Depots number one competitive advantage. The Home Depot, Incs stores have: Beautiful product displays; Friendly store associates; Clean, clutter-free environment (Nardelli, 2006). The Home Depot proves that great leaders run great stores, and great stores, in its turn, produce great results. The Home Depots job is to: Set the tone; Model the behavior; Inspire the achievement; Build the relationships (Nardelli, 2006) Customer Service Operations The Home Depot, Inc.
offers a wide variety of customer service operations (About Our Services 2007): Everyday Services and Home Services. Exterior (decks, doors, fencing, garage doors and openers, landscaping, painting, roofing, pavers, siding, solar power systems, windows, etc) and interior services (bathtubs and shower liners, carpet cleaning, custom home organization, cabinet refacing, garage floor coating, interior shutters, laminate floors, water softeners and filters, window treatments, etc. ); Services for Contractors. There is a specially designed website that provides contractors with online tools to streamline business processes. The contractors have an opportunity to view product information and pricing, to send online order to the nearest shop (as there is an option to choose the most attractive price by store location, to download orders, and to manage and pay the account online; Credit Center offers the customers various credit programs: consumer, commercial revolving charge and commercial credit program. The consumer credit program offers no payments and no interest for 6 months for purchases of $ 299 and more. The commercial revolving charge is developed for small to medium-size businesses with an option to make minimum monthly payments.
Commercial credit program is developed for medium-size to large-size businesses with an option to pay the balance in full each month; Delivery Service seven days per week. The company offers special delivery trucks equipped with motorized lifts for quick and safe delivery; Home Improvement Loans with fixed monthly payments, unsecured credit lines, no pre-payment penalties and no application fees; Tool Rental. The company offers a wide assortment of name-brand and top-quality tools (drills, hammers, generators, scaffolding, ladders, tools for sanding, floor care, cutting, painting, decorating, to mention a few) at guaranteed lowest rates; Truck Rental, Design Services, Free How-To Clinics, Exports and Imports, and Kids Workshops. Strategic Analysis The Home Depot, Inc.
implements quite effective strategy for attracting and retaining customers. However, the company should take into account the main components of customer value concepts, such as product value, services value, personnel value, and image value that make up total customer value (the quality dimension) and monetary cost, time, energy and psychic cost that make up total customer cost. Both total customer value and total customer cost should be constantly taken into account to create the most favorable conditions for attracting and retaining the maximum possible quantity of customers. The quality factor embraces everything what the company is able to give to the customer, relative to the competitors. Price factor includes what the customer pays compared to competitors offers. The Home Depot, Inc.
should constantly monitor the competitors selection of products and services in order to be sure the company offers as much as it can at the most attractive price. Additionally, the company should pay more attention t creating new products of exceptional quality, longer lasting performance and enhanced technological characteristics (i. e. offering more capacity than comparable competitors items, enhanced corrosion-free technologies, etc). Additionally, the companys remodel / repair sector should be re-examined by adding enhanced services for pro customers. The more effective dialogue between customers and The Home Depot should be established.
The customers should receive an opportunity not only to respond to distinctive and innovative products but to explain their demands and needs. As far as energy saving factor is very important, the company should continue undertaking efforts to help their clients decreasing energy costs inside their homes by developing and implementing new energy-saving technologies. Again, the companys strategy is mainly directed at their pro and Do-It-Yourself customers. However, The Home Depot should place high emphasis on enhancing their relations with average customers.
Finally, the company also may implement more customer-loyalty programs. Although consistent enhancement and perfection demands many efforts, the success and customer loyalty will repay hard work. Bibliography About Our Services. (n. d. ).
Retrieved February 5, 2007, from The Home Depot, Inc. : web All About Us. (n. d. ). Retrieved February 5, 2007, from The Home Depot, Inc. : web Nardelli, B. (2006, October 19). 2006 Hunt-Scanlon Human Capital Advantage Award. Retrieved February 5, 2007, from The Home Depot, Inc. : web Our Stores. (n. d. ). Retrieved February 5, 2007, from The Home Depot, Inc. : web
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