Falling home sales, moderating home prices, a tight credit market and weak job growth will continue to plague the home improvement industry for the foreseeable future. Softer annual sales gains are expected in the next five years in nearly all the major home improvement channels. Lowe’s is expected to grow faster than The Home Depot during this period, and the market share gap between them will continue to narrow. Amid this heightened uncertainty, the major industry players are investing in those aspects of the business that set them apart from competitors.

Given the growing economic pressures, it’s more important than ever to keep a close watch on the home improvement sector and movements of the leading players.

What is the Home Improvement Program?

TNS Retail Forward’s Home Improvement Program can help you do just that. Through a series of in-depth and thought-provoking reports and analyses combined with updated news and information databases, TNS Retail Forward’s senior home improvement analysts deliver comprehensive coverage of significant developments in the sector to help you interpret the impact on your business.

The Home Improvement Program identifies emerging issues, examines significant trends and analyzes primary consumer research to help you better understand the home improvement shopper. Through timely reports and analysis, we deliver an informed perspective on shoppers, formats, merchandising, marketing, best practices, channel forecasts, economic trends and other key factors that shape the industry.

Membership Benefits

An annual corporate membership in the Home Improvement Program includes enterprise-wide access to the Retail Forward KnowledgeBase™ and all content described below via the TNS Retail Forward Web site (www.retailforward.com »).

Newsletters

Each month you will receive:

• Monthly shopper incidence
• A summary of what’s new in the stores and across all operations, with supporting pictures, charts and analysis
• Key housing market insights
• TNS Retail Forward’s perspective to help you make sense of it all

Hot Topics Reports

These monthly publications deliver:

• Shopper behavior, attitudes and preferences leveraging TNS Retail Forward’s ShopperScape™ survey findings
• Analyses of new initiatives, such as new formats and merchandising strategies and tactics
• Industry structure and market share trends
• Sales forecasts of key industry channels and retailers
• TNS Retail Forward’s perspective to help you make sense of it all

The Home Depot and Lowe’s Fact Books

Membership also includes access to the Home Depot and Lowe’s historic growth and financial trend information. Fact Books are online databases of valuable statistical information featuring trended data on sales and store growth, key financial performance metrics, store productivity characteristics and geographic coverage. Updated quarterly, these benchmarking tools are easy to use and flexible enough to download, manipulate and customize.

Strategic Outlook Conference

Members receive three seats to TNS Retail Forward’s annual Strategic Outlook Conference. This one-day executive development conference focuses on the outlook for retailing and consumer goods marketing and distribution. A current assessment of economic developments, significant consumer trends, multi-channel innovations, and key competitive developments across all sales and marketing channels are provided, along with perspectives on emerging trends, critical issues and best practices from around the world. This event is held in major cities across the United States and Canada.

Report Archive

Members have online access to all archived reports published in the Home Depot and Lowe’s Key Account Programs—well over 100 publications!

Membership also includes printed copies of reports for your executive team and enterprise-wide access via www.retailforward.com to program content, Retail Forward KnowledgeBase™ content and databases and a report archive.

Learn More

To learn more about how your company can benefit from a membership in the Home Improvement Program, Vice President of Marketing at kclarke@retailforward.com » or 614/355-4009.