The Home Depot Essay

Charismatic Transformation is used to accomplish radical change in a short time frame, with support from the organization’s culture (Brown, 2011). Going back to the Great Recession, The Home Depot observed that their competitor, Lowe’s was still marketing via television ads that encourage consumers to focus on expensive projects such as, roofing, flooring, fences, etc. These types of projects had become unaffordable to consumers during the Great Recession. The Home Depot took a different approach towards marketing to the consumers. The company put its focus on painting or re-painting rooms. The company also noticed that their customer-base was predominantly male (contractors) and knew that they needed to appeal to the female audience. To capture this audience, The Home Depot, marketed a new combination primer-paint product and used women in the commercials to do the painting. Although this was not a long term change, it set the stage for the current success of The Home

They made changes they were not so noticeable but made a big difference. They sealed their floors to give them a glossier look and keep down the dust. They made aisles broader and reduced the usual clutter at the front entries. This was more appealing to female consumers. The Home Depot did their research and found that Lowe’s already knew this and they moved to make these changes as well. In addition to this change, the company brought in Martha Stewart products and increased the number of orange-aproned people on the selling floor. In the Nardelli reign, this was a rarity. Now employees follow customers around the store to offer their help. This change appealed to the customer as well as the employees because both felt that they were appreciated. The company displayed that it was in touch with its culture and exhibited the core characteristic: Sensitivity to the needs of customers and employees. Sensitivity to the needs of customers and employees is the degree of responsiveness to changing needs (Brown,

The Nardelli reign did focus on implementing technology, but only to increase self-service in the stores. This change only decreased the number of employees that were available and on the floor to assist consumers. Technology is still a key area of change at The Home Depot, only now the store uses technology to be more transparent in its pricing. The Home Depot has partnered with competitive price intelligence vendor BlackLocus to continue its innovative trail by developing an application that would allow the company to compare its prices with its competitors. This has allowed The Home Depot to keep its promise to provide low prices. The Home Depot made use of the Incremental Change Strategy of Forced Evolution to make these changes. Forced Evolution is used to make minor adjustments over longer periods but without the support of the organization’s culture (Brown, 2011). Although the company is working to improve the digital customer experience, they can for certain say that what they are doing currently is much better than what they were doing years