Search in book...
Toggle Font Controls
Create new playlist

Name your new playlist

Playlist description (optional)
Sign In

Email address

Password

Forgot Password?

or

Continue with Facebook

Continue with Google
Sign Up

Full Name

Email address

Confirm Email Address

Password

or

Continue with Facebook

Continue with Google

5 Consumer Markets and Buyer Behavior

Chapter Preview

You’ve studied how marketers obtain, analyze, and use information to develop customer insights and assess marketing programs. In this chapter, we take a closer look at the most important element of the marketplace—customers. The aim of marketing is to engage customers and affect how they think and act. To affect the whats, whens, and hows of buyer behavior, marketers must first understand the whys. In this chapter, we look at final consumer buying influences and processes. In the next chapter, we’ll study the buyer behavior of business customers. You’ll see that understanding buyer behavior is an essential but very difficult task.

To get a better sense of the importance of understanding consumer behavior, we begin by looking at Harley-Davidson, maker of the nation’s top-selling heavyweight motorcycles. Who rides these big Harley “Hogs”? What moves them to tattoo their bodies with the Harley-Davidson bar and shield logo, abandon home and hearth for the open road, and flock to Harley rallies by the hundreds of thousands? You might be surprised by the answers to these questions, but Harley-Davidson knows them very well.

HARLEY-DAVIDSON: Selling Freedom, Independence, Power, and Authenticity

Few brands engender such intense loyalty as that found in the hearts of Harley-Davidson owners. Harley buyers are granitelike in their devotion to the brand. You don’t see people tattooing Yamaha on their bodies, or Kawasaki or Honda. Harley-Davidson riders don’t want just any motorcycle—it’s got to be a Harley. The iconic Harley-Davidson brand is that strong.

An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people flocked to Harley-Davidson’s recent 110th anniversary celebration in Milwaukee, the city where it all began. One reporter described the epic event’s opening parade as “one of the greatest spectacles in America . . . a thunder of Harley-Davidson pride you could literally feel as nearly 7,000 [riders] rolled through downtown Milwaukee.” During the three days of rumbling fun, bikers from across the nation lounged on their low-slung Harleys, swapped biker tales, and sported T-shirts proclaiming things like “Screw it, let’s ride!” and “I’d rather push a Harley than ride a Yamaha.”

Riding such intense emotions, Harley-Davidson has long dominated the U.S. motorcycle market. The brand captures more than 50 percent of all U.S. heavyweight motorcycle sales. And despite some lingering post-recession doldrums, its revenues and profits have been growing at a smooth-riding pace. Over the past four years, sales have grown more than 30 percent and profits have jumped almost sevenfold.

Harley-Davidson’s marketers have spent a great deal of time thinking about customers and their buying behavior. They want to know who their customers are, what they think and how they feel, and why they buy a Harley-Davidson Softail rather than a Yamaha or a Kawasaki or a big Honda Gold Wing. What is it that makes Harley buyers so fiercely loyal? These are difficult questions; even Harley owners themselves don’t know exactly what motivates their buying. But Harley-Davidson management puts top priority on understanding customers and what makes them tick.

Who rides a Harley-Davidson? You might be surprised. It’s not the outlaw bad-boy biker that some people still associate with Harleys. The brand’s motorcycles attract a different breed of bikers—older, more affluent, and better educated. Remove the helmets and the leathers of a hard-core Harley enthusiast, and there’s no telling whom you’ll find. It might be a guy with tattoos and unruly hair, but it’s just as likely to be a CEO, investment banker, or gourmet chef.

The average Harley customer is a 50-something male with a median household income of $87,000. More than 12 percent of Harley purchases today are made by women. “Harley brings together all walks of life,” says Harley’s chief marketing officer. “You’ll find a neurosurgeon talking and riding with a janitor. It’s a family.” And a big family it is. The Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.)—the official riding club of “Harley owners around the world, bound by a passion to ride”—has more than a million members. The brand’s Facebook site counts more than 7 million Likes.

In recent years, the company has been extending the Harley-Davidson family beyond the core segment of older Caucasian males who now account for about two-thirds of buyers. It has crafted products and programs specifically designed to attract what it calls “outreach customers,” segments such as young adults ages 18 to 34, women, African Americans, and Hispanics. Last year, sales to those outreach groups grew at more than twice the rate of sales to its traditional core customers. For example, to broaden its reach, Harley-Davidson recently introduced its first all-new motorcycle platform in 13 years—its Street models—smaller, lighter, more agile, and more efficient motorcycles designed for the riding needs of young urban riders. Though smaller, these new motorcycles still carry the Harley mystique. “These new bikes are leaner, yet still have a mean streak,” says Harley’s CMO. “They’re the real deal, made of real steel.”

Photo shows a bare-chested man driving a Harley Davidson bike. A woman sitting behind him is holding onto him while he waves his hand to people who are watching them. — For Harley-Davidson enthusiasts, it’s all about the experience. More than just bikes, the iconic company is selling self-expression, lifestyles, aspirations, and dreams.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Harley-Davidson makes good bikes, and to keep up with its shifting market, the company has upgraded its showrooms and sales approaches. But Harley customers are buying a lot more than just a quality bike and a smooth sales pitch. To gain a better understanding of customers’ deeper motivations, over the years Harley-Davidson has conducted seemingly endless surveys, focus groups, and interpretive studies that plumb the depths of customers’ feelings about their Harleys. Beyond research, everyone connected with the Harley-Davidson brand—from the CEO and CMO to ad agency copywriters—attend biker events and immerse themselves deeply in the biker culture. They spend countless hours in the saddle to gain a firsthand understanding of what moves and motivates core customers.

All of the research yields strong and consistent results. No matter who they are, what they do, or where they come from, Harley-Davidson disciples share a common, deeply held attraction to the brand. The universal Harley appeals are these: freedom, independence, power, and authenticity. Harley-Davidson doesn’t just sell motorcycles. It sells self-expression, lifestyles, aspirations, and dreams. “It’s all about the experience,” says an analyst, “one forged in heavy metal thunder, living free and peeling wheel down Route 66. It’s an experience that allows middle-aged accountants to don black, studded leather and forget about debits and credits for a little while.”

To hard-core enthusiasts, a Harley is much more than a machine. It’s a part of who they are and where they want to go in life. A Harley renews your spirits and announces your freedom and independence. A popular line at Harley-Davidson is that “Thumbing the starter of a Harley does a lot more than fire the engine. It fires the imagination.” The classic look, the throaty sound, the very idea of a Harley—all contribute to its mystique. Owning this “American legend” makes you a part of something bigger, a member of the Harley-Davidson family.

The strong emotions and motivations underlying Harley consumer behavior are captured in a classic old Harley-Davidson print advertisement. The ad shows a close-up of an arm, the bicep adorned with a Harley-Davidson tattoo. The headline asks, “When was the last time you felt this strongly about anything?” The ad copy outlines the problem and suggests a solution: “Wake up in the morning and life picks up where it left off. . . . What once seemed exciting has now become part of the numbing routine. It all begins to feel the same. Except when you’ve got a Harley-Davidson. Something strikes a nerve. The heartfelt thunder rises up, refusing to become part of the background. Suddenly things are different. Clearer. More real. As they should have been all along. Riding a Harley changes you from within. The effect is permanent. Maybe it’s time you started feeling this strongly. Things are different on a Harley.”1

Objectives Outline

THE HARLEY-DAVIDSON EXAMPLE shows that factors at many levels affect consumer buying behavior. Buying behavior is never simple, yet understanding it is an essential task of marketing management. Consumer buyer behavior refers to the buying behavior of final consumers—individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption. All of these final consumers combine to make up the consumer market. The American consumer market consists of more than 323 million people who consume more than $11.9 trillion worth of goods and services each year, making it one of the most attractive consumer markets in the world.2

Consumers around the world vary tremendously in age, income, education level, and tastes. They also buy an incredible variety of goods and services. How these diverse consumers relate with each other and with other elements of the world around them affects their choices among various products, services, and companies. Here we examine the fascinating array of factors that affect consumer behavior.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.

Table of Contents for 5 Consumer Markets and Buyer&#160;BehaviorConsumer Markets and Buyer Behavior

Create new playlist

Sign In

Sign Up

Table of Contents for
5 Consumer Markets and Buyer BehaviorConsumer Markets and Buyer Behavior