With the warm weather of summer finally here, consumers are spending more time outdoors. Home Depot and Lowes are two specialty retailers whose stocks are benefiting from increased traffic to their stores. This season, both companies are using technology to enhance the customer experience. Home Depot is innovating at the store level by giving workers mobile devices that allow them to quickly help customers find what they're looking for inside the store.
This isn't the first time Home Depot has used technology to make its business run more efficiently. Last year eBay worked with the company to test its PayPal point-of-sale payments system in select Home Depot stores. The PayPal program helped speed up checkout times.
Lowes is also investing in technology. Last year, the retailer armed employees with 42,000 iPhone devices equipped with an EasyPay application that lets workers check out customers while they wait in line. In addition to improvements in customer service and operations, both of these stocks offer investors promising near-term earnings growth. Not to mention, these stocks pay reliable dividends. For these reasons I'm giving shares of Home Depot and Lowes an outperform CAPScall on my profile in Motley Fool CAPS.
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