Research Paper on:
How Mass Customization Could Benefit Harley-Davidson

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
sales. As it is, Harley-Davidson leaves the customization up to the custom shops. Harley-Davidson does offer a catalog with custom items in it so that the buyer can  customize his or her own bike, however. BUILDING ON CUSTOMIZATION Currently, Harley-Davidson is the worlds largest provider of motorcycles and sells, according to financial analysts, "at a generous thirty-six  times trailing earnings, ten times book value per share, and its market capitalization of $13 billion is more than four times its annual revenue" (Kass, 2001, PG). One analyst  recently wrote that Harley-Davidson was "the most compelling investment opportunity in our leisure universe" (Kass, 2001, PG). However, many analysts believe Harley-Davidson faces numerous challenges over the next few  years. They claim that the most important of these future challenges is the fact that their current prime audience, the so-called Baby Boom generation, is growing older--the "graying of  the Baby Boom generation" as they prefer to call it. This is the generation that has been the most important factor to date in Harleys earnings. The Baby  Boomers, analysts say, are "now are trading in those weekends on U.S. Highway 1 for weekends with the grandkids in their new BMW X-5 sport utility vehicles" (2001, PG).  Another issue is that for the next several years to come, the ever-worsening economy will be very unlikely to exhibit the same sort of strength it has enjoyed over the  last five years. Along with the unprecedented economic growth and massive wealth creation, aided by the rising stock prices, all of this served to provide a strong and healthy  growth for the Harley-Davidson Company. (Kass 2001). In addition to this, it appears that the foreign sales are at risk as well. Currently, Harley sales are an "international phenomenon"