When it comes to competitive brands, there aren’t many other brands that more directly compete for customer dollars than Home Depot and Lowes.

Let’s compare each brand’s statistics from Foursquare to determine how well they are doing in terms of generating check-ins.

Total Check-Ins: The number of check-ins that each brand has received across all its venues.

Home Depot: 206,679

Lowe’s: 114,748

With approximately 2,240 stores, Home Depot has nearly twice as many check-ins as Lowe’s.  With 1,710 stores, Lowe’s has approximately 67 check-ins per store.  Homde Depot comes in with 92 check-ins per store.

Total People: The total number of people that have checked-in. Unique people will be fewer than total check-ins, as people may check-in more than once at a location.

Home Depot: 92,592

Lowe’s: 47,057

Again, Home Depot has nearly twice as many unique people that have checked-in as Lowe’s.

By dividing Total Check-ins by Total People, we can learn about each brand’s customer loyalty.  (Higher is better.)

Home Depot = 2.23

Lowe’s = 2.44

While Home Depot has more total check-ins, Lowe’s holds the slight advantage in terms of customer loyalty.  Lowe’s customers check-in more often than Home Depot customers.

Customer Overlap

Using detailed check-in analysis, we can also compare each brand’s customer and determine the overlap in their customer bases.

Home Depot: 12.3%

Lowe’s: 20.6%

More than 20 percent of Lowe’s customers will visit Home Depot, while only 12 percent of customers that visit Home Depot will visit Lowe’s.  Why do more people go from Lowe’s to Home Depot than vice versa?  One explanation could be inventory.  If I can’t find what I’m looking for at Lowe’s, then I’ll try to find that item at Home Depot.

Finally, let’s take a look at average Social Influence, which is an indicator of how influential a brand’s customers are in the social web.  (Max score is 10.)

Home Depot: 2.0 / 10

Lowe’s: 2.0 / 10

Both brands have very similar customers, in terms of social influence.  However, their 2.0 score is slightly more influential than other brands we’ve covered.

Check-Ins by Day & Hour

PlacePunch also analyzes check-in traffic, enabling brands to understand when customers check-in.

As we compare Lowe’s and Home Depot, we see that their check-in traffic is nearly identical, with a peak on Saturday, as the weekend warriors load up for their two-day projects at home.  Check-in traffic by hour is virtually the same as well, as most check-ins occur between 1pm and 7pm.

Closing Thoughts

Based on these check-in statistics, Home Depot holds a significant edge over Lowe’s.  Its total volume of check-ins and total number of people that have checked-in is nearly twice that of Lowe’s.  One possible reason?  Home Depot has made a significant investment in managing its social media presence (http://twitter.com/homedepot).  Lowe’s could gain ground on Home Depot by better engaging with customers that check-in, offering check-in based coupons, or even launching a loyalty program that continuously rewards guests for visiting and checking in.


Want to learn about your business’s check-ins? Contact us to request a free check-in report for your brand.