| Otto Otto Otto
It is very difficult for anyone outside of the Company to accurately analyse their current status re "decline of the Brand", however one can determine from the statistical data out there in the public domain how the buying public are spending their cash on new bikes.
In most markets worldwide Ducati are not selling as many new bikes as they have previously (and there are many reasons for this), so the brand is certainly "out-of-favour" at the moment compared to its past performance.
The decline in the size of the global market is too much of a generalisation, individual markets are growing in size, for example the fastest growing market in Europe is currently Spain, however Ducati's models there are not what the majority of the Spanish buyers want. What's important to evaluate is Ducati's size of any given market - is it performing or underperforming.
There is also evidence that what has been refered to as the "core ducatista" are shrinking, and this maybe explained by the fact that in the '90's many folks switched into Ducati from other brands, but their experience of the Customer Support did not match or exceed their Customer Service experiences of their previous Brand. In short - they came - tasted - and left.
Ducati certainly need to up their game (as I have previously posted at DSC) and the knowledge that TI want to off-load their 30% holding is certainly hindering investment in products and services.
Can the Brand regain is lustre - absolutely - but it needs a) fresh capital and b) new faces to do that (and not neccessarily from the same source) - the current crew have rested on their laurels and not optimised the strong brand sentiment that existed throughout the 90's. Without those two fundamental criteria, then I would say the Brand is in danger of death by slow suffocation - the first sign of that would be Asian ownership!  |