Harley Davidson should focus on increasing their female customer base. By doing so, they will be able to capture a market that is growing around the world. It has shown to be a growing trend, not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. We see this trend because women are becoming empowered with financial responsibility and overall freedom in their lives. Divorce is a very common thing, as well as staying single longer, in our world today. There are a lot of women who love motorcycles and love to ride motorcycles and this is the time for Harley Davidson to gain a bigger female customer base. Women are not seen has the “homemakers” anymore. They are just as independent as a male is and in some cases they are the only parent in the family. By recruiting more women as customers, this could potentially help Harley Davidson in a bigger way by bringing in more men as well. Riding a motorcycle isn’t just for the grungy, rough and tough man, or the business male that needs a relaxing weekend; they are for women too. Women work in extreme environments too and some...
In the novel 'Of Mice and Men', by John Stienbeck, a mentally challenged man, Lennie, loses his innocence and his dream, of owning his own ranch with rabbits, when he accidentally breaks a woman's neck. In the novel 'Flowers or Algernon', by Daniel Keyes, another mentally challenged man, Charlie, loses his innocence and dreams, of being like everyone else, when, through the aid of an operation, realizes people were making fun of him rather than being his friends. Although, in both cases innocence and dreams were the loss, their innocence was also the underlying cause of the loss. Lennie is a very loveable character, who has hope and dreams. He wants to live on a ranch with George and raise rabbits. He looks at his plans as reachable even when it seems impossible because after he kills Curleys wife, Lennie still thinks he can have a ranch and rabbits, with the assurance of George. Although Lennie never reaches his dream, he dies with the thought of achievement. Charlie on the other hand, has dreams of being smart just like everyone else. He tries very hard in school and when offered the chance of having an operation to make him 'smart', he jumps at the opportunity. Although his teacher influences him, she had little impact. Unlike Lennie, Charlie reaches his dream but ends up broken hearted when his dream doesn't last.
Allstate insurance is the second largest property and casualty insurance company by premiums in the United States. Allstate insurance handles about 12% of the U.S home and auto insurance market. (Allstate, 2014). Many of Allstate’s customers fall under what one could refer to as a traditional selection of insurance for automobiles. Recently, Allstate has noticed a major shortcoming in lifestyle insurance, which includes coverage for motorcycles, boats, and other recreational vehicles, in comparison to its competitors. The motorcycle insurance sector is a 10.4 billion dollar industry and growing (PRWEB, 2012). The U.S. Department of Transportation website reports some astounding figures, including that 5,370,035 motorcycles were registered three years before the article, 7,138,476 motorcycles registered at the time of the article, and grew to 9,477,243 registered motorcycles at the end of 2012 (NHTSA, 2013). It is obvious as to why Allstate would identify motorcycle insurance as a worthy lifestyle product to devote marketing research dollars into in order to develop new strategies for cornering a share of the market.
Jib Fowles “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals” discusses the need for prominence. In the ad Portfolio there is an advertisement for Cadillac’s that depicts a man in a car with multiple women and men. This advertisement can be interpreted by an individual that if a man buys a Cadillac that he will gain popularity from both men and women. In contrast to this, other car ads from this period show mostly women. They mostly can be interpreted as a need for attention. They seem to be tailored towards a changing America, from a male dominate environment to equality. A 1966 Corvette add shows a women standing...
The stereotypical images that we see in the media in regards to gender only serve to maintain inequality and discrimination. In movies, music videos, books, and other forms of media, we see images that perpetuate the ideals of hegemonic femininity and masculinity. In DuCille’s piece, Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Deep Play of Difference, there was an immense dialogue on the commodification of difference. She mentions that “although Barbie dolls come in a virtual rainbow coalition of colors, races, ethnicities, and nationalities” they quite often are “modified only by a dash of color and a change of costume” (1994, 51) to resemble the original white Barbie. This “modification,” is what really got me thinking. The commodification of difference is simply a modification of a product or idea to sell more of it based on the demographics of the consumer. Not only are these ideals projected by the people who create this commodification of difference, but also consumers buying into hegemonic femininity and masculinity work as a tool to help products and ideas sell. If Americans are caught up in the ideals of hegemonic masculinity and femininity, they become a mere mindless follower of the consumer cycle. Americans feed into ideas and conceptions of ideal femininity and masculinity that in the end cause
Here starts the tale of how a (LEGEND) came to be. In 1903 William Harley along with Arthur and Walter Davidson of Milwaukee,WI began experimenting with an internal combustion engine in a small wooden shed, amazingly the shed doesn’t burn down and the motorcycle that was built in it goes over 100,000 miles under 5 owners. And that was just the beginning, soon after that first bike being built; it began to happen. A cheap reliable form of transportation was needed in the country. Henry Ford’s automobiles were a little expensive for the average family. So a niche opens up for the motorcycle. Though there was no cutting- edge technology in their design, it worked. The trio had just brought a single cylinder engine (based on a DeDion design) and tube type bicycle frame together. Painted in gloss black, that first machine was admired by friends and family - now it gets interesting.
...es how powerful of a symbol it has become. You wouldn’t consider the fact that someone drives a Honda Accord a defining characteristic of his or her identity but somehow that changes when it becomes a Harley Davidson Heritage Softtail. "Four wheels move the body two wheels move the sole" (Harley Davidson Ad/ 1992). It becomes clear that the motorcycle is much more than a vehicle; it is a manifestation of American values. When you break it down nothing seems more American that freedom, and brotherhood. Film has fully capitalized on these characteristics helping make the motorcycle a powerful image that has had a defining impact on American culture.
The content of the article revealed products from numerous countries, such as the United States, Germany and from the author Tahlia Pritchard’s home country of Australia. The globalization of gender based consumer products expands to a wide range of industries. The industries providing these constant reminders that men and women are different are primarily the food, health and fitness industries, but also oddly include the home organization and tool industries. I have had exposure to some of these products as a consumer and observer of what gender specific products others seem to buy. Companies making these various products capitalize on consumers who wouldn’t dare to bu...
A strategy developed for the private pleasure of the advertisers rather than any potential to reach customers or change brand perceptions. what they don 't show you is that women control $12tn in global spending, yet some companies appear to have missed this. Why do they keep getting it wrong? Women now control $12tn in global spending. The lack of female representation in the advert is a missed opportunity, (there 's a single woman in the boardroom scene with nine men, and a pair of dancing cheerleaders) but that 's more a symptom of a deeper issue: HTC has a male image problem. It’s not just in the phone companies, it’s also in cars When I spoke to a senior marketing exec from a luxury car maker, I asked the same question. He seemed baffled. As far as he was concerned his brand was not for women and never would be. When he told me that less than 10% of the brand’s website traffic came from women, it wasn’t just with resignation, it was with pride. Even though advertising companies use women to make the
Like the automotive industry of the time, Harley-Davidson thought its cure customers would buy its products versus those of any of its major competitors, chiefly because they were all foreign. Interesting enough this was true, HD annual unit sales never changed; they just did not grow with either the market or even the population. In the 1950s motorcycle sales were approximately 50,000 units annually, of which HD had 70%. By 1971, there were nearly 4 million motorcycles registered in the US and HD market share had dropped to 5%.
The incorporation of feminist ideologies in advertising has allowed for an appropriation of feminism that has exploited the movement into what Goldman, Heath and Smith describe as a means of fetishizing feminism by turning feminism into a commodity value (1991, pg. 336). In the article on “Commodity Feminism”, Goldman et al., (1991) argues that through commodity feminism, “Feminism is reduced to the status of a mere signifier or signified” (pg. 336). The recent upsurge of the feminist movement has permitted marketers to incorporate the current trend and social values of feminism into their advertisements, all while binding it to the commodity that they are attempting to push forward. Commodity feminism can be seen as stripping the movement away from being a tool for social and political change, and rather reconstructing it in a way that presents the commodity being advertised as a form of feminist revolution and activism. With Swimsuits For All’s efforts to convey the message of self-acceptance through it’s body-positive advertisement,
I have examined and analyzed the COVERGIRL™ NatureLuxe advertisement that uses common feminine stereotypes. In this advertisement, COVERGIRL™, which runs in Seventeen magazines, targets women through their choices of colors, fonts, and images used. Certain stereotypes are used; such as, those who are more feminine tend to prefer lighter, happier colors, such as pink. Also, the use of a celebrity, who many young women look to as an icon, assists in the advertisement of the COVERGIRL™ product. COVERGIRL™, more than likely, is able to successfully market their lip-gloss product in the United States by using common gender stereotypes to show femininity and how those, mainly women, should be presented in today’s society.
Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian female writer of Jewish descent, tied her writing with her very life, for her writing reflects her viewpoint on many aspects of her life. She was well-known for her existentialist writing involving themes revolving around women’s roles. Through the characters and their interactions in her works, Lispector explores the societal status of women. The male subjugation of women influences many of the themes found in her works and a better understanding of women’s social status ultimately leads to a better understanding of the relationship between the characters in her works and actions by those characters. Thus, the evaluation of women in the society contemporary to the era Lispector lived in influences the overall existentialist ideas and the motif of women’s roles in her work.
The primary audience for this ad is very wealthy, single males age 40 to 80 that are possibly going through a mid-life, or end-of-life, crisis and need something to make them feel young again. Who better to make an eighty-year-old man feel younger than his new, voluptuous, twenty-something wife? Not only does this ad target older men, it also brings in the younger upper class, as well. By having this very old man and very young, beautiful model pose as husband and wife, it gives the message to all men, that regardless of appearance, they can have a beautiful girlfriend as long as they have the money and a Dodge Viper. Dodge is definitely targeting the self-esteem of wealthy men. Men that, although wealthy, may not have everything they want in life. They’ve made their fortune but are lacking in joy. This ad is using another exploited emotion in this country, lust, to sell the Viper.
The way they are portrayed has a major effect on the self-esteem of Women and young girls. Women compared to Men are not represented equally in media, this is shown in many ways. How Genders Work: Producing the J. CREW Catalog by Paul Muhlhauser and Kelly Bradbury represents how both Women and Men are portrayed in their magazines. What was found that the font used to describe the models clothing was significantly different between Men and Women. A skinny small font was used for the Women and a big and bold font was used for the Men. This was meant to emphasize that it should be kept skinny for Women and not to emphasize curves or shape in body type whereas the Men’s font was used to represent the work that men do, implying they do some sort of physical labor (Muhlhauser and Bradbury). The way that Men and Women models pose and are photographed also has a significant difference. Women are posing to appear fragile and off balance as if they need a prosthetic or Man to rely on. The Men however are posing with their bodies posing strong and stable (Muhlhauser and Bradbury). Women often should be photographed with other girls to represent how “women are social beings who work at being dreams or developing playful girl-friendships”. Also women are photographed sometimes not showing their faces or only showing fragments of their bodies to “Emphasize how fragmented Women’s lives are without Men” (Muhlhauser and Bradbury). The differences between how Men and Women are photographed set a very disempowering feeling to Women. A commercial starring talk show host Kelly Ripa sets am example on how Women are being portrayed. This commercial is for kitchen appliances and it shows her running around the house cooking, cleaning, and taking care of her children. In a certain part of the commercial she says how the appliances help her “be the charming co-host” implying that her husband is
Welcome to the automotive world, the last holdout in the battle against political correctness. This is one of the few places left where one can make a statement about women and men and not be assaulted with court cases or be accused of being a bigot. In the automotive media, it is still acceptable to represent men in business suits driving luxury vehicles, and to show mothers driving their kids in a minivan. There is one simple reason that the automotive media has remained unadulterated by political correctness—money. As a private industry, both car manufacturers and aftermarket companies have one goal, to sell cars and car related products, and to make money while doing so. As such, these companies use marketing techniques that will most effective reach their target market, which is the true populace, not the world envisioned by political correctness(hereafter to be referred to as PC). For this reason, the marketing techniques used by the automotive industry give us a more realistic view of society and how men and women view themselves.