Harley-Davidson media plan strategy and implementation

Harley-Davidson made motorcycle has the leading position in the market and sustains its reputation as the motorcycle of choice for motorcycle riders. That reputation has been linked largely with male riders, and indeed males are the largest group interested in purchasing motorcycles by far. The company now seeks to expand its customer base by attracted more females to motorcycle riding and wants to do this by finding ways to appeal to potential female riders. The reputation of the motorcycle to date has been tied to macho attitudes coupled with ideas about personal freedom and the traditional lure of the open road. Many men are drawn to these attitudes and images and see motorcycle riding as a way of fulfilling the need. The question now raised is what would attract women to this activity and what sort of media campaign can be mounted to attract more women to motorcycles.

Background

Harley-Davidson is only motorcycle manufacturer in the United States and has been designing and producing heavyweight machines for almost a century. The company has benefited greatly from the loyalty of its customers. The first motorcycle was built by the company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin early in the 1900s by the Davidson brothers, William, Walter, and Arthur, joined by William S. Harley. These four designed and developed the cycle with its three horsepower engine in the Davidson family shed. They continued to refine the machine until 1903, when they established the Harley-Davidson Motor Company and made three of the motorcycles for sale. Demand and production increased at a healthy rate for several years, and the company started to advertise by1907. The engine was also improved as a new model featuring a V-twin engine first made the low, deep rumble now identified as the signature Harley-Davidson sound. Using this engine, the rider could reach speeds of 60 miles per hour, formerly thought to be impossible. This sort of achievement helped set the company's motorcycles apart from others as the company grew.

Competition did increase over the next few years, and growth for the company continued through the First World War, which was a particular boon for Harley-Davidson as the motorcycle was commissioned for use by the military, notably by the forces on the U.S.-Mexico border, then suffering incursions by the forces of Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. Some 20,000 of the company's machines were employed by the U.S. infantry during the war. The war helped prove the value of the motorcycleand enabled Harley-Davidson to incorporate improvements into its new machines. During the 1920s, the company gained the lead in innovative engineering, adding such features as the Teardrop gas tank and the front brake. In 1921, a Harley-Davidson machine was the first to win a race in which motorists reached average speeds of more than 100 miles per hour. Harley-Davidson managed to survive the Great Depression beacsue of a strong dealer network, continued use by the military and police, and strong exports to Canada and Europe.

After Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, Harley-Davidson adopted the same approach to producing motorcycles. Motorcycles had traditionally been used by workers and businesspeople, though now the more affordable automobile would become the vehicle of choice as the motorcycle in time became more a recreational vehicle. During the Second World War, demand increased again as the motorcycle was again used for the military and demonstrated great versatility. The company turned almost all of its putput to the war effort, and after the war, a healthy postwar economy meant consumers with money to spend on recreation, a need met by Harley-Davidson with additional manufacturing capacity in 1947.

During the fifties and sixties, Harley-Davidson became the major maker of the motorcycles in the United States, and was in fact the sole American motorcycle manufacturer. The company continued to make innovative design changes by introducing its Sportster model in 1957, starting the era of the all-powerful, throaty "superbikes." An entire subculture developed around these motorcycles, with leather jackets and riding as a statement of a desire for a life of freedom on the open road. The film the Wild One, starring Marlon Brando, showed biker gangs riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles as packs of lawless renegades, a stereotype the company still actively strives to dispel. Of course, that image was not made out of whole cloth and started with an actual trashing of a town in Northern California by a biker gang. The image would become part of film culture again in the late 1960s with movies about the Hell's Angels and with the great success of Easy Rider.

The company went public when in 1965 the two families ceded control and put the company's shares on the market. In 1969, the company was purchased by the American Machine and Foundry Co. (AMF), a leisure equipment manufacturer headed by Harley-Davidson fan Rodney C. Gott. This arrangement helped the company at a time when new competition developed from Japanese companies. Motorcycles continued to gain market share into the seventies and eighties as the company opened new plants and developed new marketing techniques. Innovations added an extra $1,000 in costs to each bike, and the profit line suffered because of this change. Management then applied pressure for greater sales volume, and quality began to suffer as production standards that customers were lowered, exacerbated by chronic shortages of parts. The problems added more costs, and market share started to decline. The market share dropped from 80% to 20%, though some loyal riders would settle for nothing but a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, while many newcomers were choosing Japanese affordability and dependability. The recession in 1981 added to the problems facing the company, leading to a turnaround effort as Harley-Davidson executives put together a plan for a leveraged management buyout. Improvements were made in the manufacturing process and in the management of inventory. Changes were also made in the motorcycle itself in the 1980s as there was a lessening of demand. In that same period, the company started placing more emphasis on marketing, establishing the Harley Owners Group (HOG), a club with its own newsletter for fans of the motorcycle. Promotions were also developed to attract large numbers of new buyers from an upscale niche, including the use of television commercials and invitations for people to take a tets ride.

More recently, the company has used cyberspace for promotion of the product, with a website that communicates more directly with owners and with potential owners. The classic appeal of the Harley-Davidson is the central issue on this website, though the company is also seeking to appeal to new customers with different approaches to the consumer and to matching the consumer to the motorcycle.

Current Situation

The intention now is to increase the participation of women in the female section of HOGs and to increase sales of the Sportster models to women. A media plan is to be written to address the needs of this program and to reach that particular group. Recent data on sales to men and women are cited as follows:

Harley Data for 50 Top Markets

Populations (000)

DMA MARKET NAME Age18+ Age18-24 Age25-34 Age35-44 W18+ W18-24 W25-34 W35-44 W25-44 San Diego, CA 2205.0 317.9 442.6 465.5 1108.3 147.3 219.0 224.6 443.6 Pittsburgh, PA 2262.8 269.1 325.5 418.7 1195.9 133.4 163.1 217.1 380.2 Phoenix, AZ 3133.8 406.2 602.5 625.9 1604.7 203.6 299.5 305.4 604.9 Wilkes Barre et al., PA 1171.1 141.0 166.2 218.5 603.4-69.8-80.0 108.3 188.3 Orlando et al., FL 2450.4 276.5 386.9 479.9 1283.0 136.2 197.7 242.7 440.4 Portland-Auburn, ME 747.5-82.1 108.1 153.7 398.7-41.0-58.2-82.3 140.5 Tampa et al., FL 3075.6 295.4 435.3 547.6 1621.2 146.6 221.8 278.6 500.4 Birmingham et al., AL 1338.6 175.7 234.8 256.2 714.5-88.7 120.8 132.83-253.6 Sacramento et al., CA 2653.9 363.0 462.7 553.2 1401.4 191.7 252.8 280.6 533.4 Boston et al., MA-NH 4752.4 557.4 818.0 1032.9 2512.5 281.0 436.5 527.1 963.6 4448.9

As can be seen from this, sales to women are lower in all categories compared to sales for men, though such sales are strong in certain markets. At most,. The appeal is half that for men, which is not a bad customer base size given that the motorcycle has long been a male item and has emphasized the ore macho aspects of the motorcycle for decades. How active this part of the base is in groups like HOG is difficult to say from this data, but part of that problem might be the name FHOGs for Female HOGs, which might indeed by a problem to be addressed with a new names and a new emphasis on the appeal of the motorcycle for women. The media plan will address the advertising and promotion of the motorcycle and may also lead to some changes in the way woman are included in the marketing mix in the future.

Target Audience

The target audience is women in the same basic groups as men, leaning from age 18 to 44 in the groupings noted above. These demographic divisions reflect distinct differences among the different divisions, assuming somewhat different reasons for buying the motorcycle for both men and women. The younger crowd may be more attracted by the dangerousness of the bikes and by the sense of adventure involved. Older groups seek a certain return to youth and show an adherence to the idea of freedom. The motorcycle at one time had the aura of an outlaw lifestyle, as noted, an image that the company has not sought and often seeks to counter. Still, that image remains strong and does appeal to many people. This does not mean that riders are outlaws or even that they really want to be outlaws, but they do buy into that image as a way of escaping from their normal lives into a different cultural experience when they ride on weekends. This idea has appealed for dome time to urban professionals who ride motorcycles on weekends and holidays for pleasure, sometimes alone and more often in groups of business people seeking to get away for a few hours and using not only the motorcycle but the image for that purpose. Whether women respond specifically to that same impetus or are instead more attracted by some other aspect of the experience should be researched as a way of shaping the message to appeal directly to what appeals to them. Evidence shows that a sense of personal freedom is one part of the appeal, as is a desire on the part of business women to be part of the scene that appeals to their male colleagues and that they may also perceive as a rite of passage for them in the business world. That can be the appeal to women in certain situations, but it is not the broad appeal that is needed to increase the number of riders by a significant amount.

Currently, statistics show that one out of ten riders is a woman, and women constitute the one growing segment in the industry. U.S. sales of motorcycles have been down at least since 2005, and efforts to attract more women have been successful, though the growth potential is much greater than has been tapped as yet.

Studies show that the typical rider is a male in his late thirties, married, college educated, and earns over $44 thousand per year. Studies further note that female riders make up over 9% of the total market and that the number of women motorcyclists has more than doubled in the last ten years, while the total quantity of all registrations has increased by only 42% (Hostetler, 2002, p. 3). For most of the last 80 yeas or so, advertising for motorcycles has appealed to young men and has at the same time discouraged women fro buying and riding a motorcycle. At most, women were depicted as passengers sitting behind the male, an image that has had to change in the era after feminism gained ground and suggested a different vision had be featured in advertising and promotions. Another element that mitigated against female ridership was the design of the motorcycle itself, with tall set heights, handlebars and control levers requiring a wide reach, and heavy motorcycles, all elements that prevented many women from becoming riders. Those design elements have been changed for a product like the Sportster, which appeals to women because it is more their size and also has controls they can use with greater facility. Motorcycling in America is more for sport and leisure, and women have wanted to be part of this movement and to join the men. The newer motorcycles allow them to do so. Cost is less of a barrier and is in fact an appeal in many cases:

This new perception of motorcycles led to the introduction of more expensive models with higher prices. This may explain much of why women with higher than average incomes make up much of the female market (Hostetler, 2002, p. 5).

Marketing Considerations

To reach this target audience, the message has to be shaped to appeal and to convey the information desired. The conventional marketing communication mix includes tools such as research, product or service packaging, pricing, distribution, promotion and advertising, sales, budgeting and campaign monitoring. These communications tools could be applied to any product. The intent would be to convey information and image to the consuming public.

First, it is important to send a single compelling message. Consider this in terms of product packaging, which for a motorcycle would be the image that is the central issue in communication. It is important to focus every word, visual, and sound of the campaign on one core idea, and this idea could be embodied in a mascot such as an animated character, a visual that could be reproduced on products, in advertising, on television, and -- if given a voice -- on the radio.

Research is an important tool so that you can develop a clearly defined target market for your communication. This means knowing who the primary customers are as well as knowing their key consumer motivations. For a motorcycle, this includes such things as freedom, recreation, personal achievement, and so on.

Advertising and promotion used for this product must be directed at the most effective medium. It is important to reach the target consumers through the most cost-effective communication and distribution channels within reach. This means not only what you can afford, but what will reach the target consumer. This means further research to match the motivations of the consumer with the communications means echoing those motivations-- shows on radio and television, for instance, or newspapers and magazines read by the target population, and today websites that are accessed by this population.

Campaign monitoring begins when the other means of communication are being formed, meaning that the team needs to know beforehand what measurement of success will be used in the monitoring process. How you define success will determine how you judge the communications you use and determine what works and what does not. Among the possible measures are sales, inquiries, revenues, or inventory turnover for products. Changes in these areas would signal success or failure of the marketing communication campaign.

Values are something we talk a good deal about as a general concept, but we do not examine the issue as closely as we might and do not examine the term itself for its meaning, its implications, and its worth. Values are the criteria by which we judge our actions and the actions of others and by which we make decisions. In a social setting, there are shared criteria which are identified as societal values, and values from different groups to which we belong may clash, just as the values of a group may conflict with our own personal values. Values are not absolutes and are not universals, for they differ from one society to another and even one social setting to another. In terms of consumer behavior, we make consumer decisions based on our value systems, and the values shared by the majority thus determine the buying patterns of the majority. Marketers take these values into account knowing that the closer to these values they can come with a product or service, the better that product or service will do in the marketplace. The values of import in the marketing of the Harley-Davidson have long been quality, power, freedom, community, and image.

Marketers should consider the core values of the consumer, and in America, these values are ascertained by various means by marketers. Earlier mass-marketing strategies included various means of ascertaining demographic information concerning how buying habits were governed by the consumers' sex, income, education, occupation, and other characteristics, and marketers also tried to divide the purchasing world into groups according to social class. These mass-market strategies are now considered crude and overly general, and a new approach is called psychographics and includes benefit probes, role-playing, and photo collages along with large-scale psychographic segmentation. Some core values seem always to have an effect, however, among them a sense of personal freedom, quality, value for money spent, individualism, originality, and personal success.

These values are often expressed in the marketing strategies undertaken to reach the consumer and sell products and services, though often the values are implied rather than overtly stated. For instance, the marketer entering the American market with a clothing line will associate the clothing with images reflecting these values -- people who are expressing themselves, doing so freely, and achieving much while wearing this clothing. Commercials would show young people working and playing in these clothes, implying that anyone wearing the same clothes would thus be successful and free as well.

Quality is an important value, and it is directly associated with the value of value for money spent. Americans will spend more for higher quality, and they will also spend more for a perception of higher quality. This shows that there is a conflict between some core American values and American behavior in that some market segments will purchase imported clothing, for instance, for the designer label as much as for any other reason. The conflict comes from the fact that Americans will assert their individualism by associating themselves with a group, a class capable of buying certain kinds of products, certain brand names, and certain designs. These consumers thus prove that they are individuals by proving that they are just like members of a specific class of people. This is really the purpose of most advertising, to show the consumer a group to which he or she would like to belong. If the people in the ad are seen as individuals and as successful, then the consumer will want to be the same. On one level, this is not an expression of individualism at all, but consumers still value the idea of originality and individualism just the same.

Success is also demonstrated by the consumer by what he or she buys, wears, eats, and so on, so again, the consumer who believes that those who achieve success either do so because they buy a certain product or will buy a certain product because they are successful will want to do the same thing to prove they are successful as well. Marketers can make use of this fact in the way they shape their message as they see to associate their product with the values the consumer holds and also with the behavior that the consumer will then demonstrate.

A key element in marketing is image, not just the image of the product or the company, but the image that the consumer wants to have about him or herself. Consumer behavior has been defined by the American Marketing Association as "the dynamic interaction of cognition, behavior, and environmental events by which human beings conduct the exchange aspects of their lives" (Bennett, 1988, 40). Information processing on the part of the consumer should be considered in terms of motivation, in terms of the factors that get people to behave in a certain way. There are different formulations that have been offered to explain human behavior, and one of the more significant is that offered by Maslow. Maslow's hierarchy of needs sees human needs in a series of tiers, with the most elemental requirements at the bottom and other needs above. Each tier must be satisfied before the human being is able to move to the next tier. At the bottom are the basic physical needs of food, sex, shelter, and clothing, and the human entity needs these fulfilled before he or she can consider needs on higher tiers. The next tier is that of safety and security needs, followed by belongingness and social needs, esteem needs, and finally self-actualization. This theory suggests that consumers satisfy their needs on one level before they move on to the next higher level. The consumer first satisfies his or her needs for food and shelter and then becomes more concerned for items such as health insurance and radial tires. At the next level there is a need for belonging that can be fulfilled by churches, clubs, and family associations. The fourth level concerns status, which might be satisfied by the purchase of paintings or jewels. The highest need is that for self-actualization, which implies doing something to develop personal talents, such as taking art lessons or working toward a new occupation. The top levels are most likely to be achieved in economies with a discretionary income.

Basic needs explain many purchase decisions on the part of consumers, but there are other reasons as well why consumers buy things. Some people may have an unusually strong concern about their health, for instance, and they will then buy vitamins and nutrition books. Others are anxious about personal hygiene and buy deodorants and mouthwash. Still others crave excitement and seek thrills in skydiving or some similar activity. Marketers may also appeal to pride in personal appearance or possessions to sell soaps, cosmetics, or house paint. Economy can be a powerful motivating factor, and many people want to save money and so are attracted by offers that promise savings.

Another factor that may motivate consumers to certain purchasing decisions is membership in various social groups, and consumers often buy what their friends buy. Marketers thus group people into social classes and address the needs of a class rather than individuals. Among the determinants of class grouping are occupation, source of income, type of housing, and location of residence. Social class membership often determines when people buy and what they buy.

Demographics is another factor, and within a family different family members influence purchasing decisions at different stages of life. The purchasing behavior of a family changes as it progresses through its life cycle, with six major stages being identified: 1) young single people; 2) young married couples with no children; 3) young married couples with dependent children; 4) older married couples with dependent children; 5) older married couples with no dependent children; and 6) older single people. The arrival of the consumer at each stage of the life cycle initiates needs for new classes of products (Dalrymple & Parsons, 1986, pp. 172-174).

Marketing strategies are affected by each of these factors, as well as by other factors that might be used to explain consumer behavior. As noted, the economic level of a community, or a social class, will demonstrate what sorts of products might be desired by members of this group, while other economic levels would be interested in different products. Marketing strategy is influenced by these different requirements. Marketing strategies consist of various physical and social stimuli, including products and services, promotional materials, places for exchange, and price information. These marketing stimuli are to be placed in the environments of consumers in order to affect their affect and cognition and behaviors. Certain steps are to be followed in developing a marketing strategy that is effective. The marketer must first determine the needs and affect of a consumer by using an initial consumer analysis to focus on basic affective and cognitive elements and behaviors. The cognitive element is awareness, or whether consumers know about a product. The affective element is attitude or evaluation, referring to the feelings of the consumer about the brand. Purchase behaviors are the behaviors focused upon. Strategy development is based on a balance of these different elements and an understanding of how they affect one another and how they may be changed to alter subsequent consumer behavior (Peter & Olson, 1990, pp. 26-29).

Consumer decision making can be explained in terms of a cognitive processing model including interpretation and integration, with an emphasis on the interaction among these two processes. Interpretation processes concern how the consumer makes sense of aspects of the physical and social environment, aspects which can be manipulated. Attention concerns how the cognitive system selects stimuli to interpret. Integration processes concern how consumers combine and use information. One type shows how attitudes are formed, and the other concerns the issue of intention to buy. Both offer marketers information as to how the consumer makes decisions and is motivated to action, and the marketer can then provide the stimuli that leads to the desired behavior and that satisfies the needs which will motivate that same behavior (Peter and Olson, 1990, 51-52).

The marketer needs to consider the way people behave, why they behave as they do, and what elements in their environment can be manipulated to alter that behavior. To develop strategies regarding motivation, personality, attitudes, and lifestyles, the marketer must understand each of these concepts and how they are manifested, developed, and changed. One approach used by marketers today is called psychographics, and it is intended to allow the marketer to understand these concepts and to see how human behavior is manifested and shaped.

Psychographics is an area of psychology much under discussion in recent years, and it has application for marketers, pollsters, and others who gauge the feeling and thinking of the public. Earlier mass-marketing strategies included various means of ascertaining demographic information concerning how buying habits were governed by the consumers' sex, income, education, occupation, and other characteristics, and marketers also tried to divide the purchasing world into groups according to social class. Psychographics is the art of combining psychological methods with market research, and researchers using this approach assume that consumers have emotional bonds to the things they buy. The approach began after World War II when disciples of Freud stated that deep unconscious desires drove people to buy particular products. The first generation of researchers used psychoanalytic techniques to get around the rational mind, but they soon discovered that they could not ask consumers direct questions about why they bought something because the consumer often did not know, usually because of the tendency to rationalize motivations. Ernest Dichter was the first to argue that women used a particular brand of soap to wash away their sins, and he also equated products with specific behaviors. He used projective techniques that are still in use today (Piirto, 1991, pp. 52-53).

Message

Based on an analysis of the target consumer for the Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle, certain approaches to marketing need to be implemented immediately and then followed through. The image to be projected remains one of freedom and personal achievement for women as for men, though for women the message can be modified to suggest that riding a motorcycle is another way of taking one's rightful place and of gaining the freedom formerly denied. Advertising needs to show more women as riders, both with other women as a group and in mixed groups of male an female riders. Dress should be fashionable and appropriate, shying away from the more traditional hard leather look that much of the advertising to males has featured.