Essay about Ducati Case Study

Starting from a company of less than 75 workers and owning less than 20,000 SCU for production, research, quality assurance and conduct warranty work Off The Chain Bikes has doubled the plant capacity and hearing doubling the workforce within two short years. The company is successful by targeting and capturing lucrative market shares by heavily investing in the desired technical specs and design styles of one of the most influential Racing bikes. Our keen ability to thoroughly research market demands, predicting competitive strategies between the four market majority shareholders by reviewing and interpreting the marketing reports and our aggressive design and development plans have significantly increased our market share and increase shareholder value. Our core competencies and strategic goals will be realized by carefully following our established plans and aggressively price our bikes to increase total market share.

Current sport bikes were inspired and derived from their traditional core competencies such as engines with futuristic design and good handling.

Honda has continued to embrace the changes that happen around its operations to ensure sustainability and profitability. The current global motorcycle manufacturing sector is full of competition. It, therefore, becomes crucial for every manufacturer to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and then identify the opportunities to exploit to gain competitive advantage. Honda is Japanese based automobile company; it has numerous subsidiaries in Asia, Europe, and North America. Due to the advancements in technology, Honda will be required to make use of the latest technological trends to stay competitive. The business level strategy at Honda is in line with its enterprise and corporate strategy. The corporation also conducts Research and

Ducati has developed and managed their value chain very well. This contributes substantially to their strong position. I’ve already discussed Ducati’s effective management of Inbound Logistics and Operations. Ducati’s Outbound Logistics approach is oriented around brand management in each of its markets. This is accomplished through dedicated, single-franchise dealerships instead of multi-franchise dealerships. This decision means that Ducati seeks a high-value customer experience with lower volumes in lieu of a mass-market approach. This is a strategy that is consistent with being a niche player; it makes sense for the Japanese firms to have multi-franchise dealerships since they are close substitutes of each other.

Consumers are not limited to a single market, many of them will be purchasing multiple bikes, but all of them have specific preferences. Successful company will meet customer’s needs and maximize sales by growing the potential market size as well as taking sales from competitors.

According to me, the motorcycle industry is very attractive. The main reason to back my claim is the level of competition in the industry. There is a very high level of completion between all the companies present in this particular segment. The main factors that drive this rivalry are different positions of different players within the industry, differences in technical know-how, different marketing campaigns, differences in core nature of the products and differences in strategies. The players in this particular industry don’t fight over price of their products, they rather compete with each other in terms quality of their products and the nature of their services to different segments of customers. Each player had its own unique strategy and nature of the product for a particular segment of customers, this tends to intensify the competition amongst companies in the industry.

Historically, how did Harley‐Davidson manage to dominate the US market? How did it do so and what were its sources of competitive advantage?

1. What is the nature of the opportunity? Could the Ducati brand be expanded beyond motorcycles? Why or why not?

The overall intensity of rivalry in the motorcycle industry is strong, key players in this industry include the Harley Davidson, Winnebago, Polaris, Thor, Artic Cat and Marine Products. These top performers hold a high percentage of

In this paper we will perform a complete analysis of the Harley-Davidson Corporation including their corporate and business strategies, strengths and weaknesses, environmental opportunities, the five industry forces, and financial situation. Harley-Davidson has many attributes, which will be apparent in the following analysis. The paper will attempt to define the different components of the analysis and put them all together in a way that seeks to explain the way that they contribute to the overall success of the company and its stakeholders.

Historically Harley-Davidson to be a Niche Marketer, which is they had focused in on one particular aspect of the market. Kotler and Keller identified the following characteristics of niche marketing; customers have a distinct set of needs, they are willing to pay more to the firm that best suits their needs, it is not likely to attract competitors, gains economies through specialized products and it has a size, profit and to grow. Almost all of these hold true for the “heavyweight” segment of motor cycles that Harley-Davidson produced.

Harley-Davidson has managed to dominate the U.S. market by investing in research and development, experimenting with its designs and

The strength of Harley Davidson can be seen in its logo and product brand. In the United States, the Harley Davidson is like a cult since it has so many followers, as depicted in the case study whereby in all the rallies, hard core fans of the company, for example the Harley Owners Group was present. This gives the company a competitive advantage since it has a market that is readily available and willing to purchase its products no matter the cost. The other strength of the company as seen in the case study was in the protection by the government since it was a United States company. This helped Harley to recover when the company placed an increase on the tariffs charged on the

| * Only motorcycle company that dominated the World Superbike Championship in years preceding 2003 * Broad range of bikes (dual sport, sport touring, super sport) with leading edge technology * Its development in the U.S. in early 2000’s has supported Ducati steady growth

Before to Ducati’s acquisition by Texas Pacific Group, a deep financial crisis affected Ducati, undermining its production and consequently negatively affecting its market results. Production was less than production capacity and therefore it was clear that a relaunch of the company was necessary. The strategic plan carried out by Ducati Group, with the help of newly appointed Minoli, focused on the idea of increasing the company's value through a growth in turnover volume and protection of product profit margins. One of the most interesting aspects of the changes embraced by the Ducati, is the restructuring of the production system which began in the mid-1990s in order to maintain the product margin and increase the level of sales and turnover.