PESTEL Analysis : The Pest Analysis Of Home Depot

Lowe’s is continuously being threatened by Home Depot in losing market shares. It is a constant battle; Lowe’s and Home Depot are expanding substantially in attempts to take over territory claimed by the other as well as unclaimed territory. The biggest weakness for Lowe’s is its lack of customer service. Customers are leaving Lowe’s in search of credible, knowledgeable service which is found at Home Depot.

PESTEL analysis is widely used to better understand the external environment of the company. The acronym PESTEL stands for political, economic, sociocultural, technological, environmental, and legal factors. PESTEL analysis helps managers better understand the threats and opportunities a company faces.

Lowe’s (LOW) and Home Depot (HD) are competitors in the every growing market of Home Improvement. The following analysis of each company will examine the home improvement industry, the individual companies, their operating philosophies, their financial strengths or weaknesses, and a final conclusion on which company would be a better long-term investment.

I believe that Home Depot has done an excellent job at reaching its goals in the past ten years. They have been able to expand their market by aggressively opening several store locations and using a clustering strategy. In doing this they have become a market leader and they have also been able to keep their SG&A expenses down by eliminating redundant expenses by spreading them out between stores close in proximity to each other. Home Depot is facing a few problems in order to continue reaching its stated goal(s) of becoming a global leader and expanding their existing market. There are a few established business that are in direct competition with Home Depot such as Lowe's, their number one competitor, and other companies such as Eagle Hardware & Garden of Seattle, who has been preparing for the intense competition

Home Depot and Lowe's believe in big warehouse space, an informal atmosphere and low prices. They are able to offer the lower prices to consumers due to their purchasing power. Inventory differs depending on the story type, home centers typically sock more lumber and building supplies, as their biggest customers are contractors. They pay their floor employees minimum wage, and keep overall costs down by keeping them as part time employees.

Lowe’s is part of an oligopoly type market structure. An oligopoly is a situation in which a particular market is controlled by a small group of firms with at least two firms controlling the market. The main key to behavior in an oligopoly is that companies must take into account what other companies will do. In perfect competition, firms are price-takers and can ignore other firms (Basic Economics, 2009). The home improvement retail stores are an industry that includes Home Depot, Lowe’s, Builders Square, and in other states, Menards.  Smaller companies have to try to compete with them to stay in business.

If we look at Home Depot's business segments and the statistics on new home sales, we can see where the challenge is. According to the Commerce Department, sales of new homes grew by 6.6% in the month, setting the annual pace for 2010 to 307,000 total units sold. Although, there was an increase in September, this annual pace is the worst on new home sales since 1963, even when mortgage rates are at an all time low. This signifies why there would be disappointment from Home Depot. It is quite obvious that they will continue to struggle, at least through the 4th quarter of this year due to an industry dependent upon a strong real estate market.

Home Depot competitors are primarily in the home improvement and hardware retail industry, but also compete in the building materials retail and distribution, consumer electronics and appliances retail, and convenience stores and truck stops sectors. Some of Home Depot’s main competitors include: Lowe’s, True Value, and Ace Hardware. Now, these competitors are the main competition of Home Depot and all three stores carry about 75% if not more of what Home Depot sells. Keep in mind, that there are also smaller companies, often family-owned lumberyards or hardware stores that compete with Home Depot and the other large chain stores. However, Home Depot’s biggest competition is Lowe’s. “Home Depot and Lowe’s are home

The external environment can be easily assessed by using the PESTEL tool. PESTEL stands for political, environmental, social cultural, technology, economical, and legal forces. The PESTEL analysis for Qantas Airlines is as following:

Macro environment is crucial to the development of a company. All the external factors can have huge positive or negative influences on Travis Perkins plc, therefore a better understanding of the environment of the company is of supreme significance (Peng & Nunes, 2007). Among all the analysis tools, PEST analysis is one of the most effective tools to analyze the external environment of a company (Riley, 2012). This part will demonstrate PESTLE analysis of Travis Perkins plc below. The result of PESTLE analysis can be demonstrated in the following table 1.

When conducting an analysis of external environment, PESTEL model is a helpful tool to analyze and assess the external factors (political, economic, social and technological, environmental, and legal) that impact the company’s strategy and operations (Jurevicius, 2013). Below is Raytheon’s PESTEL analysis. See Appendix A for a full list of external contributing factors affecting A&D industry.

The use of PEST analysis can be seen effective for business such as their strategic planning, marketing, and product development. Furthermore, PEST ensures that company`s performance is aligned positively with the powerful forces of change that are affecting business environment (Porter, 1985). PEST have four factors which are Political, Economic, Social, and Technological. However, we use these factors to check how they interplay to the business or the activity of an organization.Using PEST analysis is important when a company decided to enter its business operation into new markets and new countries. In this case, using PEST will help to adapt effectively to the realities of the new environment and to make contingency plans for threats by preparing business and strategic plans (Byars, 1991; Cooper, 2000).

PESTEL analysis is a method used to study macroeconomics - the macroeconomic environment of an enterprise. Otherwise, it is called the general segmentation of the environment. It defines the basic spheres of the environment, which are areas that have a crucial impact on the functioning of the organization. Also marks the future strategy of the organization through an in-depth analysis.

The PESTLE analysis can be used to assess the strategic relevance of the six principal components of the macro-environmental: political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal forces. It can be used as a tool by companies to better understand of the macro- environment they are operating in.

External analysis of general environment will be done using PESTEL which refers to how the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal environment affects an organization. Below will be a diagram of PESTEL, followed by a brief explanation of each factor and their examples.