n – not just being different, but being better. It fundamental to Lowe’s success as they focus on providing customer more of what they asking for. Financing program that helped local builders get loans, coordinated building plans with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and then helped contractors fill out the government forms and trained construction companies to build FHA approved homes.When new home construction virtually came to a standstill in the later part of the 1970s, Lowe's made the decision to target consumers. The management team believed that increasing consumer sales would reduce the company's vulnerability during economic and seasonal downswings. In 1978 the RSVP plan (standing for retail sales, volume, and profit), was introduced to attract consumers in a big way. The strategy worked; by 1982 sales had reached $1 billion, and when the figure reached $1.43 billion in 1983, it marked the first time that Lowe's had made more money selling to consumers than to contractors. They increased focus on installed sales and commercial business customers, this was as a result of changing trends, because of time pressure, “do-it-yourselfers” are changing to “do-it-for-me”.Special Order Sales Program – This program satisfies the unique tastes of their customer base and broadens the 40,000+ items stocked in stores to the hundred of thousands of products offered by their vendors.Focus on providing products and services that please female shoppers. While, women and men make equal number of purchases, women are responsible for initiating and influencing a much greater percentage of home improvement projects.The change from first-out (LIFO) method to the first-in method (FIFO) to determined the cost of inventory, has reduced costs in most product categories due to a combination of better buying, increasing imported products and logistics efficiencies. The change also aids in financial stat...
