Home Depot vs Lowes - Research Paper Example

Home Depot Versus Lowe’s Service and Advertising The mission ment of Home Depot reveals that the company has a competitive advantage because of the excellent services it offers to its customers. The first core value of Home Depot is to offer excellent services to its customers. Others include taking care of employees, giving back, ethical values, entrepreneurship spirit, and creating shareholders value. Despite the many years of operation, the company maintains its core value in the mission, which is to satisfy their customers effectively (CCK web).

Additionally, Home Depot goes beyond its mission to support sports, charitable organizations, and community projects. This has boosted its customer base and public image. Comparatively, Lowe’s vision aims at improving its operations to provide customer focused services and products. The company is still in the process of offering best services to their clients. From the year 2011, Home Depot has geared its efforts towards a better customer relationship management (CRM), which help in understanding and servicing the customers.

First, Home Depot delivers as promised. Their lead-time for a delivery is as minimal as possible. Although they hire installation services like all other competitors, Home Depot have adopted good values of making a promise and fulfilling it on time. An article on seeking alpha website quotes a customer who received an installation of three appliances from Home Depot in one day. In fact, in three hours everything went as arranged (“Seeking Alpha” web). From their website, “Home Depot offers national installation services through pre-screened independent contractors for products ranging from floors to roofs, windows to water heaters, and kitchen cabinets to vinyl siding” (Home Depot web).

Lowe’s is an equal competitor of Home Depot but has a longer lead-time for their deliveries and is unable to arrange installation of appliances on the same day. Secondly, Home Depot has equipped their employees with detailed product knowledge. Each appliance specialist on the stores can handle all questions from customers. Lowe’s is a major competitor of Home depot that has followed suit in beefing up its services to accommodate its customers. However, feedbacks from customers prove that appliance specialists do not have detailed product knowledge beyond reading off the display card (“Seeking Alpha” web).

This means that some of the customer’s questions remain unanswered, which is a poor CRM. Thirdly, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution as quoted in Clark Howard website, Home Depot in efforts to improve services to its customers has implemented a new handheld device. The device allows employees to check stock, call around the store, and ring up the customer immediately with the information (“Clark Howard” web). Additionally, first phone enable appliance assistants to speak to their colleagues and inquire where about of certain products, reducing customers’ waiting time.

To improve service to its customers, Lowe’s has introduced a new credit card that enables customers to pay for products without annual fees charged on it. To attract customers to use it, Lowe’s gives customers an option to receive 5% discount on a single purchase or a special financing offer (Trefis web). Fourthly, Home Depot shows courtesy to its customers by giving them 10%discount up to $500 maximum to all active, reserve, retired or disabled veterans and their family members with a valid military ID (Kate web).

Lowe’s has adopted a similar option to serve their customers better. Fifthly, Home Depot has a good CRM that enables customers to give feedback for the services, products, and information received from Home Depot. Information received from customers allow the company to offer better services and give the company information needed to innovate better products that are customer oriented (CCK web). Lowe’s has an online rebate centre where customers can learn about price changes and find answers to the questions they may have (“Destination CRM” web).

However, it does not give them a room to give their feedbacks. Advertising is a tool used to inform customers of the available products in the market and persuade them that they are the most superior in the market. Home Depot has adopted a site that promotes its floor products, which also supports a commerce enabled mobile site. The advertisement has several banners that carry differing messages on different products on the floor. Additionally, this advertisement is one of a kind because it enables the highest level of conversation by the customers.

Home retailers have an option of viewing products via their mobile phone and shoppers can add items to their list on the mobile phone. In the same regard, shoppers are in a position to identify the nearest Home Depot store to visit (Johnson web). Lowe’s posts its advertisement on the weekly circular where customers can access daily price falls and other services. Considering the overwhelming competition faced by Home Depot and Lowe, each company uses rigorous marketing strategies. Home Depot has taken great advantage of social media platforms for advertising.

The company has a dedicated team that deals with social media advertising (“Home Depot” web; “Clark Howard” web). Additionally, Home Depot outsources advertising services to advertising companies such as Richards Group. However, the most remarkable advertising strategy used by Home Depot is use of mobile Ads. Mobile Ads have actually come in handy at this important time of internet marketing. On the other hand, Lowe primarily focusses its marketing strategies to television and radio commercials.

Many of the media advertising adopted by Lowe are made through sponsorship of television and radio programs. More importantly, Lowe has embraced the power of internet advertising and has conspicuously used various websites to market its products especially to online consumers (“Destination CRM” web). Works Cited “CCK,” “The Home Depot Mission Statement,” 2012, Web, 6 August 2012, “Clark Howard,” “Home Depot’s new customers focus,” 2011, web, 6 August 2012, “Home Depot,” “Stores, products, and services,” 2012, 6 August 2012, “Seeking Alpha,” “Home Depot delivers where competitors fail” 2012, Web, 6 August 2012, Johnson, Lauren, “Home Depot accelerates mobile strategy with commerce-enabled ads,” Mobile Commerce Daily, 2012, Web, 6 August 2012, Kate, “Lowe’s and Home Depot revisited,” Military, 2012, web, 6 August 2012, Trefis, “Lowe’s can gain market share with new customer incentives,” Daily Finance, 2011, web, 6 August 2012, “Destination CRM,” “Lowe’s launches online rebate centre,” 2012, web, 6 August 2012,