Ducati is a professional motorcycle manufacturer, especially in producing sport motorcycles. Ducati had been transformed from a company on the verge of bankruptcy into one of the most profitable motorcycle manufacturer by Federico Minoli. At the end of April, 2001, Ducati had gained a market share of 7% in the sport bike segment while Industry analysts agreed the company had an excellent growth potential in the following years. However, by ensuring the company’s profitable double-digit growth in the future, Minoli wanted the company to attack Harley-Davidson’s market by producing cruiser and reach a goal of 10% market share.
If Ducati want to enter the cruiser market, the weakness is total quality control since Ducati is currently focused on producing sport-style motorcycle, they have no experience about the market of cruiser. They even don’t know how the customer want the cruiser be. Although Ducati will invest largely to research and produce cruiser, the lack of production experience will be a high barrier for them to produce a great cruiser. For the challenges, Ducati has to attract the customers in touring market since this kind of customers has a great interest about the cruiser motorcycle. According to Exhibit 10, the average age of Ducati customer ranged between 25 and 35 years old with an interest on the sporting motorcycles while the median age for Harley-Davidson customer in 2000 was 45.6 with an interest on cruiser, touring and naked motorcycles. This data shows it’s difficult for Ducati to attract the customer in a different segment. Moreover, according to Exhibit 4, the knee down riders and fast riders want a motorcycle with a multiple function and a high performance while weekend cruisers want their motorcycles to be medium degree of complex function and medium degree of comfort. It is difficult for Ducati change their product features to afford the weekend cruisers.
In order to overcome the weakness and challenges, there is a