You have hit the target with a few of your points Pyrah. Offering a ride 'platform' that offers an opportunity to customize, personalize your machine could attract the 'look at me' culture that has been amplied with the 'selfie'. To be fair, it is part of the human condition to express creativity.
It is difficult to witness any demise in scooter ownership, sales, if you live around these parts. Driven not so much by petrol prices, but limitations with parking and herendous traffic. An open car space, for an older building, sold with exclusive use rights, would fetch around $50k. When a new large scale Mirvac development sold out in our street several years ago, within weeks, motorcycle on-title parking was being offered at $18k. And then if you do have a car, and can actually get anywhere, you need then feed the hungry meters, if you can pull up.
But this is relative to the area in which I live. I rarely get the car out of the garage for these reasons, prefering to jump on the pushy or scooter. But truthfully I do not need much excuse. The 'chunky' scooter market, which is best now left to BMW (the Tmax will always have a unique place) should be viewed seperately to sub 224cc scooters (NSW). If a dealership is not strategically located in or near the 'jungle', then it is possible that sales of smaller scooters will suffer. An experienced rider, I would not ride anything less than a feisty 150 (but would prefer more) to any of the Yamaha dealers from where I live. Just wouldn't do it.
Imo. A great pic by the way. I've seen that look in summer around these parts.