Powersports Marketing Research for Advanced Planning

The lead-time for developing powersports products (i.e., motorcycles, ATVs, side-by-side utility vehicles and personal watercraft) is measured in years. This makes strategic planning and product design very difficult. A carefully crafted powersports marketing research strategy can provide key direction and insight.

Fourteen years of steady sales growth in the motorcycle and ATV industries has been followed by five consecutive years of sales contraction. So what does the future hold? In addition to lost sales, the powersports playing field itself is changing. Sport bikes and off-road motorcycle sales continue to drop, while less expensive commuter-type scooter sales are on the upswing. And while there has been a devastating drop in ATV sales, there has been incredible growth in the side-by-side industry.

Powersports marketing research is a critical component to a better understanding of the landscape. For a given manufacturer, there are many questions. What is my brand image? What are my strengths and how should I leverage them? What are my weaknesses and should I allocate scarce resources to overcome them? What should my product lineup look like next year and five years after that? What will my competitors’ product lineups look like at that time? What new features and technologies should I offer or avoid? How much should I charge? How do I keep my current customer base happy? How do I attract new ones?

Clarity Research has been finding the answers for powersports marketing research questions since its inception. We live, eat and breathe powersports products. Let us use our methodological expertise to design research protocols to address your toughest questions. Learn more about us at (www.clarityresearch.net).

Automotive Marketing Research for Marketing Purposes

The automotive industry is highly competitive and ever-changing. Nothing is forever. General Motors was the largest automotive company in the world for many years before being overtaken by Toyota. Toyota may well be overtaken by Volkswagen before the end of the current decade. Who may be targeting VW after that; Hyundai?

All auto companies conduct extensive marketing research. Many use similar approaches while other put their own unique spin on things. Some research is sound and other research is not so sound. Part of the problem is that auto companies employ very few (if any) professional researchers in their research departments. Typical automotive research department employees are business professionals who cycle through different jobs at their particular company, and the research department is just a few-year stop along the way. They learn from their predecessors and pick up some knowledge from their research vendors, but aspects of their expertise are weak at best. Sampling theory is a complex issue, as is multivariate analysis and fractional factorial design (conjoint analysis). These are not topics easily mastered through on-the-job training, yet they are vitally important to getting the most out of a research project.

The end result is that sometimes billion-dollar decisions are being made based on information of dubious character. Everybody can write a questionnaire and get people to fill it out. Almost nobody does a very good job of designing a valid and reliable research process designed to address the research objectives. Poorly designed research procedures can still come up with the correct answer…sometimes. The problem is that there is almost no way of knowing whether this is one of those times or not.

The principals of Clarity Research have more than 25 years of automotive marketing research experience, and well over a decade of motorcycle research experience as well. We are research experts; well-grounded in sampling theory, questionnaire design, multivariate analysis and a wide range of modes of data collection. Clarity Research has been finding the answers for automotive marketing research questions since its inception. We live, eat and breathe the automotive industry. Let us use our methodological expertise to design research protocols to address your toughest questions. Learn more about us at (www.clarityresearch.net).