Group report
The Home Depot, Inc. and Canadian Tire Corporation
Financial Statement Analysis

Part A
Description of Retail Industry:
Retail is the process of selling consumer goods and/or services to customers through multiple channels of distribution to earn a profit. Demand is created through diverse target markets and promotional tactics, satisfying consumers' wants and needs through a lean supply chain. In the 2000s, an increasing amount of retailing is done online using electronic payment and delivery via a courier or postal mail. Retailing includes subordinated services, such as delivery. The term "retailer" is also applied where a service provider services the small orders of a large number of individuals, rather than large orders of a small number of wholesale, corporate or government clientele. Shops may be on residential streets, streets with few or no houses, or in a shopping mall. Shopping streets may be for pedestrians only. Sometimes a shopping street has a partial or full roof to create a more comfortable shopping environment protecting customers from various types of weather conditions such as extreme temperatures, winds or precipitation. Online retailing, a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions and mail order, are forms of non-shop retailing.
Retail Industry competitive environment:
Retail industry is a highly competitive industry. Recently, as technologies advances dramatically, traditional retailers have been transforming themselves towards online retailing, a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-consumer transactions and mail order. Thus, the competition of technologies has gradually played a huge role in the whole competition of retail. Apart from this, as the development of globally economy, the competition of retail is not only confined in local market, but the whole world. Lots of