Harley Davidson Executive Summary

Harley Davidson, the name makes grown men smile and act like kids. The only problem is that Harley Davidson only targets grown men the company has lost its younger crowd to the "crotch rockets". Honda and Yamaha are two companies that have taken advantage of this and they have stolen many customers from Harley Davidson. What is being proposed here is to revamp Buell and make a true Harley Davidson "crotch rocket".

How this will be accomplished is by looking at the companies' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. First we will look at the company's strengths. Harley Davidson has a name that people recognize with quality and dependability. This will sell many products just on name alone. Harley Davidson can take this name dominance and build a nice looking crotch rocket and take over the cruiser and sport markets.

Next issue the company's weaknesses in the "crotch rocket" market. First no one recognizes the Buell name and therefore no one wants one. The company needs to rename Buell into Harley Davidson. The next problem is the design of Buell's top bike the XB12R [Exhibit 3]. This bike looks nothing like any other popular bike on the market. Without redesigning this bike to look sportier and to have the design of other bikes on the market Harley Davidson will never emerge in this market.

That leads to the company's many opportunities to have a more appealing sport bike. Harley needs to make modifications to its sport bikes make them look more like the Yamaha R1 [Exhibit 1] and the Honda CBR1000 [Exhibit 2]. These are the premier sport bikes on the market today and as can be seen these bikes have the same design. So all Harley Davidson has to do is copy these designs rename Buell to Harley Davidson and the bike will sell itself.

These same opportunities are also threats to Harley Davidson if action is not taken fast. Buell is not going to last much longer and soon the younger crowd will not even be interested in Harley Davidson because the will be happy with there Honda and Yamaha's. So acting now is the only way to eliminate these threats before it is too late and Harley Davidson loses its entire market share.

In conclusion Harley Davidson has a chance to appeal to the younger crowd by doing small modifications to the company. However the company must act now while there is still time to get a piece of the sport bike market. Harley Davidson