While Harley may be winning on market share with younger consumers, younger consumers simply aren\u2019t buying as many bikes as their parents and grandparents. Economists and financial analysts have done the math, and Millennials – young Millennials in particular – have a measurably lower interest in riding motorcycles. One analyst estimates that motorcycle ridership has already stagnated, and will decline over the next five years. Harley\u2019s own sales figures seem to support that projection: U.S. sales fell 3.9% in 2016, and sales in Q2 of this year were down 9.3%. And it\u2019s not just Harley: the entire American motorcycle market has shown largely negative sales numbers recently. Though Indian Motorcycles has shown impressive signs of growth over the past few years, corporate owner Polaris acknowledges the industry as a whole is \u201cflat,\u201d and their broader motorcycle segment posted lower sales figures last quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harley, Indian, and other manufacturers are doing all the right things in an effort to attract new customers, but there are larger cultural forces at work. I had lunch last week with a local economic development official, and as we watched the middle-aged Rally crowd endlessly rumble past the restaurant, we tried to understand why younger generations aren\u2019t as interested in motorcycles. Is it because motorcycles represent feelings of freedom and rebellion, and Millennials are finding those feelings in other things? Or, since young Americans aren\u2019t having children or working traditional desk jobs in the same numbers as their forebearers, maybe they don\u2019t feel the need to get out on the open road on the back of a bike?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we had the answers, I concluded, I could land a big fat consulting contract with someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is no easy answer, and there\u2019s no simple way to convince an entire generation that they should be more interested in a product. Of course, it\u2019s possible that something in the American zeitgeist will shift in the near future, and perhaps Millennials will suddenly discover the joys of chrome and leather and the open road and start snapping up Sportsters and Softails left and right. After all, the motorcycle market in other parts of the world is looking rosier. Young people in Asia and even Western Europe seem more amenable to motorcycling than their American counterparts. A shift is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if nothing changes, the American motorcycle industry is in for a bit of a contraction – and so is Sturgis. It\u2019ll be a slow process, and it\u2019s still years away, but the regional tourism industry will surely start to consider the implications. The average Rally brings in about 400,000 people, and in 2015 there were a record-breaking crowd of 800,000 (give or take) for the 75th anniversary of the event. What happens to local economies if those numbers begin to tick down? What if the 100th anniversary crowd in 2040 doesn\u2019t top 250,000 people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a long-term planning exercise, but it is becoming more urgent. The youngest Baby Boomers are in their late 50s. The oldest are in their 70s. Unless there\u2019s a sudden change in consumer buying habits, the summer visitor season in western South Dakota could be in for a big transformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The quiet is almost eerie. It turns out that after 10 days of sharing a community with several hundred thousand motorcyclists, you get used to the noise. The constant highway rumbling fades into the background and becomes the new normal. Then, when the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally officially concludes and the bikers return home, the sudden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17,5,11],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-consumer-research","tag-perspective","tag-planning-strategy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n