Home Depot – Marketing Fail

Home Depot used to offer a 10% military discount to disabled veterans and serving soldiers. It’s important to realize that a company like Home Depot might offer such a discount because they have a high level of respect or admiration for vets, most likely it’s because it attracts veterans into the store to spend their money there. Lowe’s, which also has a store here, still has a discount, so I’ll go there even though its a little further away.

I own a business myself and even though I’m a veteran, I offer a 10% discount because vets will bring their business to me, it’s mutually beneficial trade, plain and simple.

Home Depot getting rid of their discount has nothing to do with respecting the military or anything like that, I assume they have decided that they don’t get enough benefit from the arrangement, and that’s fine, but they have lost my business because of it. If Lowe’s were to scrap their discount, I would go back to Home Depot since the store is closer.

Discounts to certain groups serve a purpose, they are no different from having sales where they lower prices to entice buyers to buy. A huge number of businesses offer discounts to State Employees, not because they love them but because, “hey, look I can buy movie tickets through my union and they are cheaper! I’ll get some and go to the movies!” When my mother worked for the Maine State Employees Association she bought them all the time, when she stopped working there, she stopped buying them. In other words, the discount encouraged trade where there otherwise wouldn’t have been any.

Hope it works out for you Home Depot, but I kind of doubt it.