Question

Harley Works to Draw in Younger Riders With motorcycle sales in a slump, Harley-Davidson is boosting its efforts to attract more young riders. Harley has been a high-end, aspirational brand for motorcycle riders for several decades, their image and product line resonating with Baby Boomers and Generation X riders. With those rider groups aging, Harley has seen its sales decline in recent years.

To help attract younger riders, in 2018, Harley is revamping its product development process, focusing on models that appeal to young adults, women, and minorities—in addition to its core market of older white men. This leads to a focus on smaller, more affordable bikes. Fitting this direction is the development of the street class of motorcycles, which are designed for urban riding and have a narrower chassis compared to other Harley models and start at less than $7,000. To improve their cost basis, Harley has also revamped its procurement process to look for more cost efficient global suppliers and has even shifted some of its manufacturing to India. Harley also sees the need to reorient its marketing to connect with younger riders, including shifting marketing activities from general market advertising to local, dealer-centric social activities. In short, the firm sees the need to undertake change across its value chain.

Progress to date is mixed. Younger riders are less likely to ride motorcycles, but Harley argues that the percentage of young riders who opt for a Harley is actually higher than it was with prior generations. Whether Harley will be able increase the number of younger riders is the key to its long-term sales potential.

Please address the following questions:

1. Will Harley be successful in drawing in younger riders? Why/why not?
2. What other parts of the value chain could Harley revamp to better serve the needs of younger riders? Please explain.

Answer 1

Harley would be successful in drawing attention of young riders only if the company can re-position the product and brand in a right way to the millennials.For this the company has to revamp its communication and marketing strategy and focus it at the targetted young millennials. The communication style to be in the line with its target audience and events and campaign needs to be alligned.

Hypermobility, constant connectivity, technology dependency, independence, resilience, vanity, experience orientated, and social awareness are just some of the general characteristics of this generation. Keeping all these in mind the entire marketing activities are to be done. The bike should be equipped or loaded with all new gadgets to give biker and awesome experiece remain digitally connected and out of world driving experience.

The Value chain also needs to be revamped in a way to give easy access to college going, young executives who are outcoing, adventurous and love such experiences. The entire brand experience, posters banners, digital catagoge, backdrop, brochures needs to revamp with communication and language which is young and easily connect with the target audience.The showrooms and distributors, agencies need to connect with the target group well, staffs needs to be from the same millennials so that they can get connected with the prospects well and show empathy with their general characterstics.They should participate in college event, fests, big software parks, office complexes of companies like Apple, microsofts, Infosys where they find large target audience.

They can also sponsers bike rally which brings social awareness among the propects and so connect with the brand image of Harley.