Home Depot

Home Depot, Inc.

Home Depot, Inc. is the world’s largest home improvement retailer with sales last fiscal year topping $74

billion (Figure 1). Home depot sells a wide inventory of products ranging from building materials and home

improvement products to lawn and garden products. In addition it provides various home improvement

services including bathroom and kitchen installation. Its main consumer base consists of do-it-yourself

consumers- those homeowners who do their own home improvement projects, do-it-for-me consumers-

those homeowners who hire others to do their home repairs, and professional contractors.

Home Depot operates on a large economic scale in a highly competitive home improvement industry and

competes in areas of customer service, price, store location and appearance, quality, and availability and

assortment of merchandise. Its major competitor Lowe’s operates on a similarly large economic scale and

provides a highly similar range of products and services. Lowe’s had revenues of more than $50 billion the

past fiscal year (Figure 2). Like Home Depot, Lowes is a highly recognizable brand. Other competitors include

home improvement stores such as Ace and smaller regional and local hardware stores which operate on

smaller economies of scale and provide a similar but smaller range of products and services. Additional

competitors including electrical, plumbing, and building supply houses, lumber yards, specialty design stores,

showrooms, discount stores, mail order firms, warehouse clubs, independent building supply stores, and

installers of home improvement products compete with Home Depot in specific product or service areas.

Supply houses can sell directly to consumers due to low capital requirements for entry into the industry and

directly compete with Home Depot. Additionally there is growing