The Home Depot is an American retail chain that is the most considerable home improvement retailer. The company’s customers are divided into several categories, depending on the purpose of purchase. The most significant part of them are homeowners who purchase products and complete their projects and installations. The company has numerous professional customers, including general and remodeling contractors, small and medium business owners, and retailers. Home Depot’s leading competitors are Lowe’s, Lumber Liquidators, Menard Inc., Builders FirstSource, Sherwin Williams, Sears, Canadian Tire Corp, and Home Hardware (Putra & Muzakir, 2020). Moreover, it competes with discount, local, regional, and national appliance stores, mail-orders companies, and warehouse clubs.
The company directly supplies high-quality products from manufacturers worldwide through its store support center and maintains a global purchasing program. Product development vendors identify and purchase market-leading, innovative products directly for their stores (Putra & Muzakir, 2020). This provides Home Depot customers access to a wide range of products at lower prices by eliminating third-party intermediaries. Notably, the company has multiple employees and is characterized by a favorable labor market.
The company embraces technology actively; it has recently added new virtual reality function to its mobile app. Home Depot is focused on sustainability in environmental, social, and economic areas, which is an essential characteristic of the company and a critical factor for investors. In particular, the company aims to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2035 (Marcus & Andelman, 2019). Significant increases in online sales due to changing shopping habits and the increased need for home repairs have recently improved Home Depot’s financial results.
The external political facet of extending global trade contracts relates to the state’s efforts to increase international commerce. This condition creates chances for Home Depot’s global expansion. Grounded on the socio-cultural outer aspect of selecting high-quality goods, Home Depot can provide more high-quality goods. However, the growing wealth gap is shrinking the middle class, which is the company’s leading market segment (Marcus & Andelman, 2019). Nevertheless, even with all these challenges, the company successfully expands into international markets, making it one of the most successful organizations.
References
Marcus, B., Blank, A., & Andelman, B. (2019). Built from scratch: How a couple of regular guys grew the Home Depot from nothing to $30 billion. Currency.
Putra, Z., & Muzakir, M. (2020). Competitive environment analysis in global retail companies operation strategy: A data envelopment analysis based approach. AFEBI Management and Business Review, 5(1), 16-36.