1) Your recommendation to the Harley Davidson Management Team: Should Harley Davidson continue to sponsor the Posse Ride? Why or why not? What role should the Posse Ride play in the HOG events mix? HD should continue its popular posse ride because of the following reasons HD being a high involvement product, keeping the customers involved even after the sales. It fosters the feeling of brand community which leads to consumer’s personal identification with the brand Gives a deeper insight of the target customer needs & likings Enhancing its after sales service during the stops.
Bringing business to the dealers Promotion by means of selling merchandises and creating an event Posse is an important event in the hog event mix as it focuses on high involvement and low cost. In our opinion, this should happen every year. Should be made into a flagship event.
2) How should the Posse Ride be designed to maximize its effectiveness and profit making potential, should you decide to keep it? Exhibit 7: Harley has not been able to tap into understanding the customers’ needs before and after e exhibit 7. High manager and executive involvement with the consumer Creating strong brand equity.
The memorabilia if home delivered can save the customer from trouble of carrying it all along Future Product developments.
3) Do you see some “tensions” that are inevitable if they continue the rides? What are they? How would you handle them? The structure of Posse itself was very loose it allowed lots of spontaneity, so lots of freedom Strong emotional and behavioural attachment to the brand drives high expectation regarding the experience they anticipate. Therefore manager have to successfully balance these tensions e.g though unavailaibilty of tshirt was not that a major glitch. The highe expectation of customer led it to a major dissapointment Fragmentation vs Unity-A major challenge is integrating several disparate but equally important groups. Care must be taken to reinforce the structure into the ethinically diverse group Chaos vs structure – spontaneity vs organized structure, fine balance.
