Harley-Davidson Case the Brand Community

Harley-Davidson Case

The brand community and brand relationship strategy described in the Harley - Davidson case study cannot be applied for any product or service. The product to which the marketing campaign is applied needs to create, through its very own nature, the necessity of an affinity between the customer and the producer. The example of the company I will be referring to further below is relevant in this sense.

The company I work for creates software products for a consultancy company working with different important business clients. In this sense, there are two customer-producer relationships created. First of all, the relationship between the software company and the consulting company, as the first recipient. Second of all, the relationship between the consulting company and the final recipients. However, in order to create the best relationship between the producer and the final consumer, it is often the case that the intermediary (the consulting group) is skipped and the final consumers are directly addressed.

Brand Relationship Strategy

There are two important ideas to be noted here, as representing the goal of the brand relationship strategy: customization and differentiation. The main goal is to convince the final consumer that the product he will be using, the software itself, is not only created to suit his best needs (customized), but it is created by the very customer himself.

In this sense, somewhat similar to the Harley Owners Group, albeit of a somewhat different nature, the team of programmers organizes brainstorming session and brainstorming groups in which the members of the final consumer firms get together with the programmers and customize the software application to fit the exact needs of the company. It may seem like the usual business meeting, but there are several rules to be followed.

The first and most important rule is that THERE ARE NO RULES. Indeed, everything is done in the most casual way possible: no suits, junk food, a game of pool from time to time. The purpose is to create the proper environment in which each personal idea can be communicated and shared in the working group. Each member from the teams get to say what they would like the application to contain, how they think this will improve the company's efficiency and why the project should be put in practice.

Of course, the idea was not necessarily something originally, but we thought we could go to extremes in this way. In order to evaluate the program's efficiency, we needed to evaluate the positive vs. The negative changes it may have brought about. The evaluation found out that the program had improved communication between the final recipient and the producer and that it had led to an increase in the profits of the receiving company, due to higher returns on time spent for their particular line of activity. The costs of our own software company were reduced because, in general, we found out that the number of modifications to the initial version were limited, because the initial version was usually designed by the receivers themselves.

We additionally discovered that some of the elements of the promotional mix also benefited from this system. First of all, publicity is essential and word-of-mouth can work marvels- the right references from the right people can get one far. Many of our clients told other potential clients about the benefits of our system and this proved an efficient way to work with other people. Further more, each member of the programming team had the chance to become a sales person, because, in fact, this was their job: they are selling application features and ideas.

Advertising vs. Sales Promotions

If in the case of the company presented above, sales promotions are almost non-existent and the accent is placed on publicity (I have mentioned word-of-mouth, but we also use favorable articles in magazines such as CIO or Computerworld, as well as reviews from companies such as Giga and Metaworld), the case of Harley-Davidson, as presented in the case study is quite relevant as to point out how the two elements from the promotional mix complete each other in the life of a product.

Referring to the four phases of the product's life, introduction, growth, maturity and decline and pointing out to the most important elements that need to be considered as reflections of net sales, volume and price, we may arrive at the conclusion that advertising is most likely to be used during the first two stages, where sales promotions are more efficient in the last two phases.

Indeed, initially, as a new product is introduced on the market, the volume of sales is rather small. The main reasons for this are the fact that people don't know about it or that they use a different product. The price element is not necessarily relevant here and the first goal is to get the product known. This is done through extensive media advertising.

On the other hand, once the product reached the maturity and decline stages, sales promotion become essential in keeping the interest of the consumer alive. The company can expect to increase its volume levels by lower prices and remain at a certain level of net sales.

The example of Harley Davidson is relevant in pointing out the B2C aspect. The advertising component is still strong: if we go back at the case study, we note that the H.O.G. is also in charge of the entire promotional material, going from t-shirts to pins, everything to emphasize the riding experience. On the other hand, sales promotions have not yet made their way strongly in the company's promotional mix. The reason for this is quite simple: Harley is not only a motorcycle, it is a brand.

The B2B relationship is somewhat different, in the sense that, as I have previously described the case of the software company, you do not have sales promotions and not much advertising, but strong publicity. In a business environment, a good service is discovered and told around quickly enough to make anybody want to emphasize this aspect.

As such, we may state that the sales promotion, while important in B2C (although not necessarily relevant in Harley's case), becomes unnecessary in B2B, mainly because of the final recipient of the product or service and of what he usually wants from a product. A company has enough resource to be unresponsive to a sales promotion. On the other hand, advertising is similarly important in both cases, but there is a plus for publicity in the case of B2B, due to reasons already previously described.