"Online dollar sales of automotive accessories — including appearance accessories, cargo management, exterior accessories, interior accessories, towing & hitch, and tire & wheel accessories — grew by 26% in the 12 months ending April 2019, according to The NPD Group's Checkout E‑commerce Tracking. Additionally, 34% of online dollar volume during the same time period resulted from sales within these six accessory categories."

"'Online accessory sales are seeing gains, as the e‑commerce channel is able to offer an expansive selection that can be challenging for retailers to match or maintain in brick and mortar locations,' said Nathan Shipley, executive director and automotive industry analyst, The NPD Group. 'Accessories are also not typically required as urgently, whereas a replacement car battery may drive a consumer in-​store for same-​day purchase.'”

"According to Checkout data, more than half of consumers that made an automotive aftermarket purchase online bought an automotive accessory. In fact, many of the accessory categories are seeing double-​digit online sales gains with appearance accessories up 56%, interior accessories up 32%, and exterior accessories up 31%."

"While pure-​play online retailers are capturing the greatest share of automotive accessories e‑commerce sales, traditional retailers remain in the mix as they work to replicate their in-​store sales strengths through web-​based offerings."

“'Consumers continue to move purchases of hard-​to-​find items — such as application-​specific automotive accessories — online,” added Shipley. 'While pure-​play ‘etailers’ own the lion’s share of sales in these categories, there is opportunity for traditional brick-​and-​mortar stores to remain competitive by creating user-​friendly web experiences while also offering a variety of accessories, competitively priced and available to ship. In-​store pick-​up options — convenient for the consumer — may also help keep foot traffic in the stores for the purchase of automotive accessories that are not time sensitive.'"

If car owners are looking for accessories online, the internet is also a great place to target them with ads. According to AudienceSCAN, within the last month, 70.6% of Do-​It-​Yourselfers — Auto have used a search engine to research a product they were considering. While they're online, they're 28% more likely than others to click on text link ads on websites and 22% more likely to find ads they see on social networks useful. Within the last year, they also took action after receiving email ads (54.2%), seeing ads on daily deals sites such as Groupon (47.2%) and seeing ads in both online and print newspapers (47.9%) and magazines (45.5%).

AudienceSCAN data is available for your applications and dashboards through the SalesFuel API. In addition, AdMall contains industry profiles on auto specialty equipment shops, as well as lead lists at the local level. Media companies, sales reps and agencies can access this data with a subscription to AdMall from SalesFuel.