Taking Product Data To The Next Level

7/11/2011

AAIA and its partners launch project to define physical and performance product attributes


Publish date: Jun 27, 2011

By: ”Brian Albright”

Companies in the aftermarket have increasingly adopted the ACES and PIES standards to help improve the flow of goods and information among suppliers, distributors and retailers. While those standards have helped normalize application and logistics-related information about parts, so far the industry has not tackled defining physical and performance attributes for these same products.

That's about to change. In May, the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) announced that it was launching an industry-wide project to define product-specific, performance and physical attributes across the aftermarket product set.
"In a digital, online marketplace, the customer, whether they're a retailer or a do-it-yourselfer, is making product selections and purchase decisions based on what they can see on the computer screen," Luckett says. "Customers expect to have every pro and con and feature and benefit and attribute of a product available at the click of a mouse."

This new project will define those attributes so that they can be used in conjunction with the existing product data standards. While there is a mechanism within PIES to transmit this type of product information, the marketing content has not been defined.