Home Depot and Business Research Paper

Total Length: 770 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

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Home Depot vs. Lowe's

Over the course of the last ten to twenty years, two companies have emerged as the clear favorites when it comes to home and property improvement specialty stores. While general retail stores like Target and Walmart have offered a peppering of home improvement items like their hardware and home/garden departments, Lowe's and Home Depot are unmatched when it comes to overall selection and such. Indeed, they are the two major chains out there that offer the variety of only home improvement goods. While Home Depot and Lowe's remain dominant in their market, there are other competitors out there like Menard's and there are also ethical, legal and risk-related challenges that must be prepared for and dealt with.

Analysis

One risk that both Home Depot and Lowe's must deal with is when and how to spend their money. Indeed, there are the concerns of opening new stores, closing underperforming stores, hiring workers and so forth. However, there are other less obvious things like corporate social responsibility and watching out for the information technology-related risks that are present in the retail and internet spaces. Home Depot learned this lesson the hard way (as did Target) when their system was breached due to lackadaisical setup and security on the part of their information technology staff.
Whether it be worries about keeping spending down or whether it be a lack of awareness about the risks and consequences of having such a breach, Home Depot and Lowe's should both be aware that protecting the credit card and other confidential information of their employees and customers is of paramount importance and that allowing their security to be shoddy is a non-starter on so many levels (Krebs, 2014).

The issue above is perhaps one of the more prevalent ones out there. However, it is surely not the only one. A few other issues that both Home Depot and Lowe's need to consider and process properly is how to properly staff their store, the pay and benefits for those employees, how the firms react in terms of prices and such when demand is artificially spiked (e.g. an approaching hurricane), how much risk should be taken on investments and expenditures and so forth. One may deign or dare to say that since both firms in question are publicly traded, the decisions that are made or not made are between the two firms, their customers and….....

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