Lowes Hardware Company: A Case Study

The Sales and Marketing Challenge

The main challenge facing Lowes Hardware Company is its sales and marketing being less as compared to those of its main competitors. The sales decrease has also had an impact on both revenue and earnings expectations because even though its store sales grew by 1.9 percent, it was below over 2.5 percent figure which had been given by sales analyst. Additionally, the sales increase was also significantly lower than that of its main competitors, Home Depot Inc’s. The lower-than-expected growth had a substantial effect on this company because it decreased its market share by 7 percent in the premarket trading.

Addressing the Problem

To address this problem, the company needs to invest heavily in its technology infrastructure through coming up with platforms which enable customers to access services remotely (Tolstoy, Jonsson & Sharma, 2016). Providing these platforms can play a crucial role in enabling in increasing its sales because it can enable consumers to access its services any time and also in any geographical location. The company also need to optimize mobile experience for its customers, provide improved product recommendations, better communication capabilities and refined search algorithms for its online customer service.

The Importance of Social Media

The use of social media is also crucial in marketing for this company because it can assist it to reach more potential customers at reduced cost. One of the reasons that make social media to be a perfect channel to undertake marketing for Lowes is that the company has the opportunity to create a compelling social media experience through interacting with customers and encouraging them to share products information with their friends (Guesalaga, 2016).

The Role of Technology in Marketing

This technology aligns with the current business problem in this company because what triggers low sales is lack of communication with customers and improper marketing strategies. Given that technology has become a business necessity in marketing, Lowes Company should adopt it in its operations because it can assist its marketing team to share reviews, product details, videos, photos and engage potential customers. The technology will enable the company to announce their products and sell them directly to customers all over the globe which will increase its sales as their market widens as most customers are online.

Effective Use of Social Media

Given the fact that the company needs to have better communication with its customers, using social media would be the best option as it will be able to reach many customers as compared to other platforms. In addition, the company needs to maintain the loyalty of its customers, hence the need for a technological platform that will enable active-duty service members and veterans to join and purchase products at a discount. This strategy will be crucial because it will not only lead to higher sales but will also attract more members to the platform. To understand customer preferences, it is crucial for this company to collect customer data from time to time by use of these platforms so that it can be able to design products based on their expectations.

Consulting with Stakeholders

Some of the people consulted in order to determine whether the solution meets their needs include customers and management team in this organization. The primary reason for consulting customers was to find out whether they would be able to use the proposed solutions to access products and also to express their expectations for the company. Consulting the management team, in this case, was to determine if the solution would address business needs which the company was experiencing. To ensure the solution meets IT needs, some of the people consulted include the company’s Chief Digital Officer Vikram Singh and other IT experts who had been outsourced by the company.

References

Guesalaga, R. (2016). The use of social media in sales: Individual and organizational antecedents, and the role of customer engagement in social media. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, 71-79.

Tolstoy, D., Jonsson, A., & Sharma, D. D. (2016). The influence of a retail firm’s geographic scope of operations on its international online sales. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 20(3), 293-318.