Marketing research:
Harley-Davidson

Challenge

As a 100-year-old Milwaukee company, Harley-Davidson realized that as the times changed, so must the company’s image. To assess the company’s current image with regard to diversity and community involvement, Harley-Davidson engaged Mueller Communications to conduct one-on-one opinion leader surveys with a diverse group of 100 business, community and civic leaders from throughout Milwaukee.

Solution

Mueller Communications developed a brief survey tool and scheduled interviews with community members, ensuring the sample was representative of the community by industry, race and gender.

In order to elicit genuine responses, Mueller Communications conducted each survey individually using open-ended questions and the Likert scale, a system of measurement that identifies a person’s level of agreement or disagreement with a statement. The results of the survey were presented to Harley-Davidson in a succinct report listing key takeaways and recommended next steps.

Results

Based upon the survey results, Mueller Communication made recommendations to Harley-Davidson on how to more effectively position the company’s community relations efforts, counter negative perceptions identified during the survey and increase awareness of positive efforts that were unknown to survey participants. As a result, Harley-Davidson has increased and refocused its community relations efforts, implementing innovative new community relations projects.

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