HOUSTON – The NPD Group will be launching a new Retail Tracking Service later this summer, which will monitor sales of automotive products from 20 retailers across the mass and automotive specialty channels. The new NPD Retail Tracking Service will include a diverse range of leading retailers representing almost 25,000 stores and will deliver comprehensive coverage of do-it-yourself consumer purchasing in 29 major categories, the firm said.

According to David Portalatin, NPD Group executive director of industry analysis, this new product serves as an expansion of the work previously done with its Aftermarket Industry Monitor, which NPD suspended publication of in January. The new service will be available later this summer, with a target launch date of late August. “We had been reporting auto parts channel point of sale information for 10 years up until January of this year,” Portalatin said. “What this product represents is really an expansion of that coverage.

So, in addition to the auto parts specialty channel, we are now adding a diverse range of mass and club retailers. The new service will in many cases cover as much as 80 percent of the retail market of the categories being reported and it’s going to cover 29 major automotive categories.”