The Harley-Davidson brand was created in 1903 by William S. Harley and the Davidson brothers. At the beginning, Harley-Davidson was built to be race motorcycles. As soon as 1907, the brand won several races, which allowed for the recognition from both professionals and customers. Harley-Davidson is one of the most famous brands of bikes, with a strong image, built during its entire story. Despite the economic ups and downs of the Harley-Davidson company's history, like the Great Depression in 1929, the brand is still alive. Today the Harley-Davidson Company is composed of Harley-Davidson Motorcycle, Harley-Davidson Financial Services and Buell Motorcycle. The brand is present in 60 countries with more than 1300 retailers. In the first part, we will speak about Harley-Davidson's values and products to understand well the development of the brand.
The two part will be about the marketing strategy: first, image advertising and then relation to the customer.
[...] Harley-Davidson also encourages its employees to spend part of their time to help children and communities, with the “Dollars For Hours” program. This engagement shows Harley-Davidson as a firm concerned by human's well-being and gives a good image to the public. III) Marketing strategy: relation to the customers By selling motorcycles, Harley-Davidson delivers three things; first, an image and a legend; secondly, a personalized motorcycle and finally belonging to a community. Each bike produced by the Harley-Davidson brand has a special place in the consumers mind, and represents a dream to be attained. [...]
[...] This partnership allowed Harley-Davidson to diversify its products and to target a larger public. Furthermore the image of a sporting company was reinforced by such an association. ( In 2002, Porsche has joined its efforts to Harley-Davidson engineers to create the new V-Twin Motor. Porsche has brought its fame to the famous motorcycle company in luxury, reliability and power field. Racing Department As soon as 1908, Walter Davidson, the president of Harley-Davidson rode one of his engines to win the “Federation of American Motorcyclist endurance and reliability contest”. [...]
[...] Harley-Davidson really knows that if it wants to keep selling and even grow up, it really need to enforce this values and to consider carefully what their employees think. Products Thanks to its values, Harley-Davidson brand grew up and then decided to develop its offer to meet the customer's needs. At the present time they have 5 families of motorcycles : Sportster, Dyna, Softail, VRSC and Touring. Sportster ( relatively low prices for young Motor bikers Touring ( high prices for veterans bikers VRSC ( sporting spirit with medium price Dyna ( original style and performance In addition to this diversified offer, Harley Davidson also produces a wise range of by-products. [...]
[...] One of the main values of the brand is the collectivism, illustrated by the feeling of community shared by all the Harley-Davidson owners. This implies a strong relationship and assistance between bikers but also a family spirit ; for instance family accessories can be bought on the website (children accessories, house accessories . www.harley-davidson.com The website is a powerful way of communicating to the customers, through many services and advantages. First a special site is dedicated to every country where Harley-Davidson is implanted. [...]
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