Creating value on the Harley Davidson poss ride

Résumé du document

From a branding point of view, we cannot overlook the fact that Harley Davidson is very powerful, since many customers find embodied in its cultural principles and values that resonate with their own needs and beliefs.

These core values Harley Davidson relies on are:
Freedom: the motorcycle is often seen as a symbol of freedom as opposed to the closed and confined car. Moreover, many riders use the metaphor of the steel horse to refer to their motorcycle.

Adventure: riding a Harley motorcycle means being adventurous and brave. It is obviously linked to the American archetype of the Western hero, going further and further to discover new territories and frontiers.

American traditions and heritage: being the only survivor of the American motorcycle industry, Harley Davidson is strongly perceived as a representation of the country. Thus, buying a Harley instead of a sports Japanese motorcycle (like Yamaha, Suzuki, etc.) may be considered as a patriotic act.

Extraits

[...] On the other hand, the managers face a logistics problem: participants who want to buy some accessories and souvenirs in dealers' shops are, by definition, limited. They cannot buy all the products they want for the simple reason that they cannot carry all of them during the entire ride. It is a trivial reason but a serious loss of trade, both for dealers and as a consequence, for the Harley Davidson company. Now, this ride is a huge opportunity to increase the sales. Therefore, we consider that organizing a delivery at home could be the solution. [...]

[...] American traditions and heritage: being the only survivor of the American motorcycle industry, Harley Davidson is strongly perceived as a representation of the country. Thus, buying a Harley instead of a sports Japanese motorcycle (like Yamaha, Suzuki, etc.) may be considered as a patriotic act. We may analyze more precisely Harley Davidson's identity thanks to the identity prism: The identity prism applied to Harley Davidson Thanks to this prism, we can notice that Harley Davidson's identity goes well beyond its products (motorcycles): it is able to convoke emotions felt while riding, as adventure or anti conformism, but it also opens broader perspectives like brotherhood or group spirit, and refers to deeper values as American traditions and cross-generation heritage. [...]

[...] It is a means for the Harley Davidson Company, to remember some years later the key positive points of the ride, and to communicate about the event by making this visitors ' book available on its web site. There are two advantages of putting a visitors' book on internet: to communicate about the event and to support the evangelizing practices in order to create value. In addition, a majority of the participants insist on the friendships made during the Posse Ride. [...]

[...] A condition is to make these activities free for participants, because the spirit of freedom is widely present during the event. But such activities are a way to reinforce the community, and why not communicating about the brand, recording its narrative lifecycle. Arrival time logistics During the day, riders don't ride at the same speed: some arrive earlier than others at the hotels. Therefore, in order to avoid boredom of the first arrivals, two groups could be made: a “fast group” and a group. Then it would be appropriate to organize the meals in two services. [...]

[...] Logistics The logistics is always a key point for each event. In this case, it seems that it was the biggest weakness of the Posse Ride. The overall impression of the riders was that Harley should have run tighter the ride. There were not enough constraints, the organization was too loose. It feels like Harley put the freedom of its customers as a top value and neglected the fact that people might need to feel they are taken care of, and that most of them would enjoy a conditioned freedom. [...]