Ch. 4 - The Marketing Environment

Motorcycling in America is more for sport than for transportation, and it's more popular with all ranges of society than at any other time. Much of the growing popularity with motorcycles is from people well into their careers and Yamaha Motor Company understood that, mainly targeting customers in their late 30s through their mid 50s, as known as Generation X and Y. The expanding popularity of motorcycling and a growing desire for new and ever-better products matches the Yamaha YZR R1 marketing strategy that spares no expense in its pursuit of excellence. Supersports category is becoming more selective and defined, with many customers opting to ride a specifically designed road  bike on the road and a track bike on race circuits. Also, according to the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA), one out of every twelve U.S. motorcycle owners is female which is about 8 percent of the nation's motorcycle owners. A very important statistics for a potential slice of the market that keeps increasing year after year and shows how the scenario is evolving. The new R1 purpose and design philosophy are entirely different based on this new Marketing needs. Featuring sophisticated MotoGP derived technology, this new machine is a purely focused sport bike that has been developed both for road and track.

Yamaha Motor Company can count on several events in the U.S. to target and convince potential customers at the Circuit of The Americas (Austin, Texas) and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indianapolis, Indiana), where two races of the MotoGP World Championship are held every year. In such events many Fans, Motorcycle Enthusiasts and Riders comes from all over the U.S. and Yamaha Motor Company as well as its main competitors are able to manage showcases to introduce their brand new products to convince the audience over the race event Weekend.

Despite the growing popularity, motorcycling is not an expensive activity in the United States considering that, always according to the AMA, its member-riders earn an average household income of $84,000, and own 2.6 motor-cycles where they spend an average of $800 a year on maintenance items and do about sixty percent of the work on their own bike. They also spend approximately $1,200 a year on apparel and accessories. All of this is facilitated by the web where potential customers can do basic research about the product they're interested in, get the answers about their specific needs and eventually being able to access to it.