12-03-2018, 11:41 PM
(12-03-2018, 02:00 PM)GoldOxide_imp Wrote: HD definitely has the marketing might to reinvent themselves. It may be more about the will of should they? An analogy is McDonald's Big Mac and Quarter Pounder & Cheese. These are McD's classics, and many of us still clamour for them. But the later generations may not, and McD has attractive modern offerings. If HD ever did a modern day Honda, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" type of marketing gig, but maybe uber cool, or something "Apple intelligent", or whatever similar ... they could really carve out a new market share.
Japan did it to the world (especially in the U.S.) with the likes of the CB160 during the 60's. The Chinese could very well do it to everyone with some "qool electric thang" that hasn't been thought up yet and command unexpected market share. HD with its ultra high quality standard could offer a very sexy "Apple-like" offering that sets the bar high.
Can HD handle both the cool and geek product images? If they could, they may be unstoppable.
If this were to ever happen, how might the likes of Honda respond? (no need to respond to question)
I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but I just don't think the key for HD is in marketing a product based on "quality" when the motorcycle market on the whole does not really view them as a quality product. they're trounced in terms of reliability by the reputation of almost every available japanese manufacturer. BMW still manages to plug right along and sell a lot of machines without having a reliability to match japanese products, and they also sell at a price point that is comparable to HD products, so the bigger question to ask is why do they get sales where HD fails? I think the answer is that HD must do one of two things: beat japanese prices in North America (never going to happen) or build bikes that are so new and advanced that they make the latest BMW look like a radio flyer wagon. They need new engines, new form factors, new frames, new tech in all aspects in order to compete. couple that with a marketing campaign that goes like "The Original Innovators" and you could see a revival of American motorcycles.
From what i can see they're really trying to get that done over the next couple of years. we'll see. they're going to have to keep the price in line with comparable Euro models in order to keep it from flopping, though.