Company Description
Arthur Davidson, Walter Davidson and William S. Harley established Harley Davidson in 1903. The company offers motorcycles, financial services, and other related products and services. Harlery Davidson designs, manufactures, and sells heavyweight cruiser and touring motorcycles. The company also provides spare parts, general merchandise, accessories, and other related services. Harley Davidson targets the international market for its products and services. The company was divided into Harley Davidson and Buell product lines until 2009 when the company decided to exit the Buell product line and acquire the Italian motorcycle manufacturer MV Agusta (Eyle, 2001). Harley Davidson has continued to offer ongoing services and replacement parts to Buell owners. The company provides wholesale and retail financing services, such as insurance to improve the quality of services to dealers and retail customers. The company has its headquarters in the United States and Canada (Payne & Frow, 2013).
Customer Focus
According to Pride and Ferrell (2011), Harley Davidson focuses on quality internal customer service to satisfy customer needs and understand their perception on the company offers rather than targeting its competitors. Harley Davidson branded motorcycle products to differentiate its offers from those of competitors in the target markets. The company offers five families of motorcycles that include VRSC, Sportster, Softail, Touring, and Dyna. Harley Davidson aims to target a large market share with the variety of products and services. Competition in the industry is based on prices and quality of products and customer service (Eyle, 2001).
Harley Davidson product prices are higher than those of competitors. The international heavyweight motorcycle market is highly competitive. The main competitors are Japanese manufacturers that comprise of Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki. The company focuses on extensive quality internal services to attract its own substantial market share (Shields, 2010). Harley Davidson offers two year warranty for its motorcycles and engages in various sponsorship activities, such as rides, rallies, and events like Daytona and Sturgis. Harley Davidson offers rentals, free delivery, customized software packages, and service and business management programs to its independent dealers to ensure their loyalty. The company also created the Harley Owners Group (H.O.G) to boost prestige of the company’s offers (Schmidt, 2006).
Harley Davidson has a museum that allows potential consumers to interact with each other and experience the company’s offers. The museum is used to plan rides, host special events, and showcase the company’s products and services. The museum helps create memories for customers and strengthens brand image, recognition, and reputation for the company in the target markets. The company has a wide distribution network that ensures the company products and services are available to customers. Its retail outlets are located in high traffic locations, such as malls and popular vacation destinations. The main challenge of Harley Davidson distribution is the seasonality of its wholesale shipments. This affects its economies of scale throughout the year. The company is making efforts to improve the flexibility of its manufacturing process to ensure quality customer service (James, 2007).
Recommendations
Harley Davidson needs to invest heavily on research and development to be able to reduce costs of operation and at the same time maintain the quality of its products and services. Reducing the prices of its motorcycles will enable customers shift from competitors to the company offers. The company should advance its innovation and technology on quality internal customer service trends to enhance reputation in the international market.
Conclusion
Harley Davidson has potential of dominating the highly competitive industry in the future. The company’s main challenge is competing for market share, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction with Japanese manufacturers whose motorcycles are of high quality and lower prices. Quality internal service is the main solution to achieving success at Harley Davidson.
References
Eyle, A. (2001). Harley-Davidson a hot commodity. Business Journal (Central New York), 15(16), 26.
James, D. (2007). Superior simplicity. Brw, 29(29), 87.
Payne A. & Frow, P. (2013). Strategic customer management: integrating relationship marketing and CRM. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Pride, W. & Ferrell, O. (2011). Marketing. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Schmidt, K. (2006). The power of emotion. Yard & Garden, 29(6), 34.
Shields G. (2010). The importance of quality internal and external customer service. EZine Articles. Retrieved on 12 October 2013 from http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Quality-Internal-and-External-Customer-Service&id=4867045
