Marketing Plan for Harley-Davidson: Strategies and Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive marketing plan analysis for Harley-Davidson. It begins with an executive summary, followed by an in-depth examination of the company's target market, which includes demographics, geographic focus, and brand dimensions. The report then explores Harley-Davidson's positioning strategy, emphasizing its premium brand image and commitment to quality. The core of the analysis focuses on the 4Ps of the marketing mix: product (premium motorcycles and related gear), price (ultra-premium pricing strategy), promotion (limited campaigns, including social media and print media), and place (global distribution through retail outlets and distributors). The report also evaluates and controls marketing strategies through key performance indicators like customer numbers and sales revenue. Finally, it includes an implementation schedule, and concludes with recommendations for improved customer service, personal selling, and enhanced social media marketing to increase customer loyalty and revenue, with references to relevant academic sources.

Marketing Plan for Harley Davidson
1

Executive Summary
The main objective of this report is to identify marketing strategies and their efficiency in
Harley Davidson. This report will be focusing on target marketing and marketing mix
strategies adopted by the organization to attract customers. This organization has been
operating on a global market, therefore marketplace environment for Harley Davidson is very
complicated due to impact of different external and global factors. 4 P marketing mix strategy
has been used to evaluate characteristics of place, price, promotion, and product offered by
Harley-Davidson. It is also identified that management of the organization has been using
differentiated marketing strategies to gain target market.
2

Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................2
Target market and Positioning...................................................................................................4
Marketing mix strategies............................................................................................................6
Evaluation and control...............................................................................................................9
Implementation and schedule...................................................................................................10
Conclusion and recommendation.............................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................12
3

Target market and Positioning
Target market
The selection of a particular target market is very essential for an organization in order to
market them to intended customers. For this purpose of business organization is required to
identify a particular class of customers which will be interested in buying product and
services of a company. Harley-Davidson has been using differentiated marketing strategy for
the purpose of attracting target customers. In this type of marketing strategy primary focus of
the business organization is on particular group of people rather than attracting mass
customers (Cross, Belich & Rudelius, 2015). This type of strategy is used by the organization
as prices of the product offered by Harley-Davidson is comparatively higher and mass
marketing cannot be considered with such prices.
Characteristics of the target market
Demographics- as it is already identified that the prices of products offered by Harley-
Davidson are higher as compared to other competitors therefore and income generation
capabilities of the target market will be higher. The target market will be falling between the
age group of 30-50 and primary focus will be on male customers.
Geographic- product and services offered by the organization will be targeted in developed
and developing countries rather than focusing on underdeveloped countries. Urban cities will
be the primary target of the organization.
Marketing and brand dimensions- management is focused on developing brand loyalty as it is
one of the primary factors that enables customers to keep using products offered by the
company (Dolnicar, Grün & Leisch, 2018). For the purpose of gaining customer loyalty,
management has been providing effective quality of products and services since
establishment of this organization.
Positioning strategy
Positioning strategy is a strategy that helps business organizations to segregate their products
and services from products and services offered by competitors. It can be set the primary
focus of the strategies to provide value proposition to product and services. The positioning
of Harley Davidson is very strong in market as customers consider this organization as the
4

premium motorcycle manufacturing organization. This organization has never compromised
with quality of products and services even when other organizations are riding motorcycles at
considerably cheaper selling prices (Phillips, 2016). The positioning strategy of Harley
Davidson is focused on quality of products and services rather than providing products at
lower prices. The slogan of Harley Davidson is "All for Freedom, Freedom for All".
There are various factors that are considered by Harley-Davidson while developing
positioning strategy for the organization such as specific attributes and benefits of the
products offered by Harley-Davidson (Camilleri, 2018). These attributes and benefits are
compared with other competitors in market in order to develop direct comparison. In addition
to that, the needs and requirements of customers are also considered significantly while
developing products and classes of products are developed according to these needs and
requirements.
Positioning map
5

Marketing mix strategies
4 P's of marketing strategies will be used in the scenario to identify the marketing mix of
Harley Davidson.
Product
The premium motorcycle is the main and only product that is sold by organization on a very
large scale. In addition to that factors clothing and motorcycle gears are also sold by
organization but primary product of the organization is premium motorcycles. The
organization has divided its motorcycles into two lines of products i.e. petrol operated and
electric. One of the primary specifications of products offered by the organization is that
Harley-Davidson is only selling premium products and prices of such products are higher as
compared to other competitors (Haider et.al, 2019). Over the period of time there have been
very limited changes in the manner in which production process is undertaken by the
organization. One of the primary changes that can be identified in products of Harley
Davidson is that they are becoming more cost-efficient in terms of fuel consumption.
Management has been directing its resources towards development of electronic motorcycles
so which is considered to be the future of this industry. Some of the latest products published
on official website of the company as follows-
Price
The primary focus of the organization is on high quality of products, which generally means
that overall pricing of the product is higher as compared to competitors. Harley-Davidson has
always been ultra-premium price product and management of the organization has never tried
to go into economical segment. Quality is one of the primary factors that has resulted in
customer loyalty over the period of time and it has also made brand image of the company in
market. There have been very instances in past which was not very profitable for the
organization and management has to cut down its overall indirect cost with layoff and
downsizing. This is due to the fact that demand for these premium products is not in
recession and their demand decreases significantly in such period. Still s management has
never tried to produce products and services to enter into economical segment.
Promotion
6

Different promotional strategies have been used over this organization attract customers. In
previous times management was using product placements in TV and movies to develop a
brand image of the company. One of the most effective promotion strategies of the
organization is "Harley Davidson owners group" which helps in developing customer loyalty
among new customers (Fan, Lau & Zhao, 2015). Marketing campaigns and strategies used by
the organization are very limited as Harley-Davidson does not believe in generalizing itself.
Harley-Davidson has been providing advertisements on only top-line magazines and other
print media related to automobile.
In recent times management has been using social media as one of their tools of marketing.
This is due to the fact that the overall cost of marketing in social media is limited and reach
towards the customer is high.
On the basis
of the above schedule of marketing it can be said that social media marketing and marketing
through online websites will be continued throughout the year.
7
Media March April May June July Aug Sep Oct Nov
Radio
B105
Nova
TV
Channel
10
Outdoors
Transit
Billboard
s
Social
media
Online
website

Two of the marketing strategies that should be used by Harley Davidson are as follows-
Customer and service support
As it is evident that two primary focus of the organization is on maintaining quality and
developing customer loyalty, therefore developing customer and service support will be an
essential step to word marketing of product and services. 24/7 customer helpline services
should be initiated to ensure that customers can contact with feedbacks and problems at any-
time from anywhere (Johnson, 2016).
Personal selling
The hiring of effective and efficient Salesforce should be undertaken at different stores of
Harley Davidson in order to provide personal selling services to the customers. This will help
in ensuring that customers are aware of the product and services and its quality before
purchasing. Personal selling will help in enabling two-way communication between customer
and seller which is generally preferred by customers in automobile industry. A detailed
demonstration of products and services can also be provided by sales-force (Kotler, Burton,
Deans, Brown & Armstrong, 2015). In addition to that sales staff can identify needs and
requirements of customers and suggest particular products and services accordingly.
Social media marketing
As it is already identified that social media marketing will be continued throughout the 12
months. This is the marketing strategy has been used in order to ensure that customers are
aware of products and services launched by the organization. Management of the company
can also combine social media marketing with one of its most successful promotion strategy
i.e. Harley Davidson Owners Group. Different events for camps can be established by
organization for this group in order to gain their customer loyalty and communicate values of
Harley-Davidson to potential customers. Place
Harley-Davidson is a multinational organization that was established in the United States of
America. This organization has been providing its product and services in around 67
countries of which is very impressive for motorcycle manufacturing organization. It was one
of the two most profitable and successful organizations established during great depression
along with Indian. It can be said that place of selling products and services for Harley-
Davidson has been distributed all across the globe (Kotler et.al, 2018). In addition to that
8

management has also established different places of manufacturing over the globe such as
New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas City, Brazil, India, Thailand, etc. The production unit in
India is covering demand of product in Asian market and Brazil is satisfying the demand of
Latin America.
Selective distribution strategy has been used by the organization as significant amount of
demand for a product and services are in Asian market, South America and North America.
In addition to the distribution channels of the organization can be categorized as wholesalers
and retailers both. Management has established retail outlets of Harley Davidson all across
the globe that are selling products and services of the company (Haider et.al, 2019).
Motorcycles are also sold through distributors and agents in areas where there are no retail
outlets.
Evaluation and control
Evaluation and control of marketing strategies also very important in order to ensure that
marketing strategies have been successful. The success of marketing strategies can be
identified by development of key performance indicators. During the development process
management is required to identify timing of the evaluation and responsible stakeholders that
will be involved in valuation process (Chernev, 2018). Key performance indicators that will
be helpful in evaluation of marketing strategies are-
 The total number of customers- increase in the total number of customers will help in
ensuring that marketing strategies have been affecting the business operations positively.
 Total sales revenue- In addition to the number of customers, revenue generated in a
particular accounting period will also help in identifying efficiency of marketing
strategies (Wierenga & Van der Lans, 2017).
Metric Method of
Measure
Timing Responsibilit
y
Number of
customers
Increase/
decrease
12 months Marketing
manager
9

Total sales
revenue Increase/
decrease
12 months Marketing
manager
Implementation and schedule
This section of the report will help in identifying the schedule of marketing strategies for next
12 months in Harley Davidson. This schedule can be explained with the help of following
Gantt Chart-
10

Conclusion and recommendation
On an overall evaluation of this report, it can be said that marketing strategies of any
organizations play very important role in its long term growth and development. It can be
said that management of Harley Davidson when using effective innovation to strategies to
attract customers and maintain customer loyalty among existing customers. After overall
evaluation it can be said that marketing strategies of the company are limited. Social media
marketing personal selling and customer support services will be effective Strategies for the
company to increase number of customers and overall revenue.
11

References
Camilleri, M. A. (2018). Market segmentation, targeting and positioning. In Travel
Marketing, tourism economics and the airline product (pp. 69-83). Springer, Cham.
Chernev, A. (2018). Strategic marketing management. Cerebellum Press.
Cross, J. C., Belich, T. J., & Rudelius, W. (2015). How marketing managers use market
segmentation: An exploratory study. In Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing
Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 531-536). Springer, Cham.
Dolnicar, S., Grün, B., & Leisch, F. (2018). Market Segmentation Analysis. In Market
Segmentation Analysis (pp. 11-22). Springer, Singapore.
Fan, S., Lau, R. Y., & Zhao, J. L. (2015). Demystifying big data analytics for business
intelligence through the lens of marketing mix. Big Data Research, 2(1), 28-32.
Haider, A. A., Zafar, A., Khalid, A., Majid, A., Abdullah, M. A., & Sarwar, M. B. (2019).
Marketing Management.
Haider, A. A., Zafar, A., Khalid, A., Majid, A., Abdullah, M. A., & Sarwar, M. B. (2019).
Marketing Management.
Johnson, G. (2016). Exploring strategy: text and cases. Pearson Education.
Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G. (2015). Marketing. Pearson
Higher Education AU.
Kotler, P., Keller, K. L., Ang, S. H., Tan, C. T., & Leong, S. M. (2018). Marketing
management: an Asian perspective. Pearson.
Phillips, A. (2016). How books are positioned in the market: Reading the cover. In Judging a
Book by its Cover (pp. 41-52). Routledge.
Wierenga, B., & Van der Lans, R. (Eds.). (2017). Handbook of marketing decision models
(Vol. 254). Springer.
12